Wondermindy
by schillingklaus
Summary: After being expelled from Belleview, Mindy starts a new life at Seattle, where she wrecks havoc along with her younger cousin Nevel Papperman.


**Wondermindy**

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**Klaus Schilling**

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**Synopsis**

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**Rating**:

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PG-13

******Disclaimer**:

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iDon't Own any shows and other works of arts used for this story.

******Genres**:

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Science Fiction, Family, Friendship, Fluff, Supernatural, Mystery, Drama, Adventure

******Fandoms**:

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The story occurs in the identified universe of a huge variety of current or past live action shows produced for Nickelodeon channel, including, but not restricted to _True Jackson VP_, _Ned__'__s Declassified School Survival Guide_, _Drake & Josh_, _Zoey 101_, and it makes heavy use of a variety of members of their casts.

******Timeline**:

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The story starts with the end of season two of _Drake & Josh_. This is assumed to coincide with the end of season on of _Unfabulous_ and _Ned__'__s Declassified School Survival Guide_, and in the middle of the first season of _Zoey 101_. It vastly predates the canonical starts of _The iCarly Show_, _True Jackson VP_, _Victorious_, _Bigtime Rush_, _The Troop_, _Supah Ninjas_, and _How To Rock_.

******Summary**:

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Suspended from Bellevie, Mindy Crenshaw is forced to live in Seattle with her little cousin Nevel, and to enroll at Priorwood Prep — a school mentioned in _The iCarly Show_: _iMight Switch Schools_.

Mindy's subsequent decisions influence the storylines of a variety of _Nickelodeon_ shows severely.

Mindy pursues her quest of winning the national science fair, and she helps Nevel with the construction of his web site, _Nevelocity_. She also becomes his guardian.

After high school, Drake and Josh alias Socko run a lower class hotel in downtown Seattle. Megan will join them later on.

******Couples**:

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Mindy Crenshaw / Cal (from _The iCarly Show_: _iGo Nuclear_), Nevel Papperman / Megan Parker, Josh Nichols / Stacey Dillsen, Drake Parker / Lucy Stone (a guest character from _Bigtime Rush_: _Big Time Rocker_) et alii.

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**Acknowledgements**

The story is written for _Livejournal_ community _100 Tales_, one chapter per story.

The story also alludes to third party owned show _Smallville_, based on third party owned _DC_ cartoons.

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**Contents**

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Chapter 1 Prologue

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1.1 The Decision

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1.2 Good-Bye, San Diego!

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1.3 Lightning Storm

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1.4 Emerald City

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Chapter 2 Priorwood — Junior Year

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2.1 Summer Break

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2.2 New Year — New Pupils

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2.3 Nevel's Crush

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2.4 Leanne Carter

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2.5 Nabucco

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2.6 Dolorem Ipsum

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2.7 Oranas

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2.8 Leanne's No

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2.9 Blue Mood

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2.10 Battle Robot

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2.11 Otis At PCA

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2.12 Nevel is back.

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2.13 Spring Break In California

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2.14 Running Into Drake And Josh

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2.15 At PCA

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2.16 Alone At Junior Prom

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Chapter 3 Priorwood — Senior Year

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3.1 Summer With Nevel

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3.2 Back At Priorwood

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3.3 Miss Fielder

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3.4 The Laboratory

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3.5 Happy Birthday

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3.6 My Sick Aunt

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3.7 Swab Arts

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3.8 College Picks

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3.9 National Science Fair

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3.10 A Split Family

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3.11 Forevermore The Winner

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3.12 Leanne's Crush

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3.13 The Flight Back

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3.14 Guardianship

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3.15 Senior Prom

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3.16 The Runners Up

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Chapter 4 Seattech — Freshman Year

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4.1 Theory And Practice

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4.2 Zen Of Operating A Stick Switch

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4.3 Guardian

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4.4 Natasha Misa

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4.5 Presentation At PCA

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4.6 Carly Shay

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4.7 Socko

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4.8 World Record

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4.9 New Career

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4.10 Five Years

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4.11 Boots Made For Walking

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4.12 Carly On TV

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4.13 Pirates Of The Carabas

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4.14 Carly For Priorwood

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4.15 Blind Date At Dusk

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4.16 Fencing Bensons

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Chapter 5 Seattech — Sophomore Year

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5.1 Remorses

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5.2 Summer Heat

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5.3 Lost In Japan

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5.4 Carly At Priorwood

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5.5 Calvin Coozeman

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5.6 Fall

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5.7 Hard Rains

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5.8 Parker Nichols Inn

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5.9 Snowflakes

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5.10 Solo Oboe

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5.11 Teaching At Ridgeway

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5.12 Mr Henning

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5.13 Shane Diamond

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5.14 Vital Surgeries

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5.15 Melissa Robinson

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5.16 Ongoing Feelings

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Chapter 6 Seattech — Junior Year

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6.1 Love Of My Life

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6.2 Black Locker

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6.3 All In White

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6.4 Starting At Ridgeway

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6.5 The Innovators

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6.6 Evil Desire

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6.7 Stacey At Parker Nichols

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6.8 Puff Of Smoke

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6.9 Winter Gap

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6.10 Christmas Rock

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6.11 Prince Federico Eduardo

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6.12 Hotel Furniture

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6.13 The Other Cheek

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6.14 Bigfoot

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6.15 Samantha's Victims

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6.16 Abducted At Birth

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Chapter 7 Seattech — Senior Year

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7.1 Wondercousins Activate

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7.2 Into The Forrests

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7.3 The Mean Cheater

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7.4 The Report

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7.5 La Traviata

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7.6 Giving Thanks

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7.7 The Cosplay

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7.8 Prince And Commoner

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7.9 Telepathy

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7.10 The Sky Is The Limit

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7.11 Dustin And Carly

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7.12 Spring Wakeup

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7.13 The End Of A Villain

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7.14 Graduation From Seattech

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7.15 Faithful And True

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7.16 Conclusions

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**Chapter 1 Prologue**

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**1.1 The Decision**

Hello, my name is Melinda Crenshaw, and you may call me Mindy, as everyone did, barring maybe one despicable person of the worst sort, a certain teenage rock idol named Drake Parker. He preferred to refer to me using the code named "The Creature". I have always been a passionate science geek girl with the ambition of winning awards and revolutionising several fields of modern natural science and technology, allowing mankind who was about to sink in a quagmire of mediocricity and ignorance to leave old ground and make the big step into a future where mankind has evolved into cyborgs, superheroes, or even better.

My hometown is San Diego,the big city at the borderline between California and Mexico. My parents were a big number in the fishing industry.[1:1], and they were sometimes creepy.

I had visited Belleview school from elementary to tenth grade, and always been on the honour roll, until, one day, I got busted for trying to restore justice at this godless institution. I will come back to the details at a given point.

But all I was able to say for now was good-bye to San Diego.

I would have preferred to move to a boarding school named Pacific Coast Academy,[1:2] not far from the gates of Los Angeles. My reason for this was that of punishing certain girls at that school that were fans of Drake Parker, who had given a concert on their campus just a few weeks ago.[1:3]

My parents had at first glance agreed with my choice of a subterfuge, but then they had somehow come to hear about my motivations for having caused all the trouble at Belleview.

The centre of the cause was Joshuah Nichols, a somewhat nerdy dweeb at Belleview on whom I had got a crush. But when Joshuah's father Walter had married Drake's mother Audrey, things had started going downhill.

Joshuah had started to try hard to be as cool as his jerk of a step brother, which would sooner or later have ruined his character completely. And of course Drake was to be blamed and hated for this abstruse perversity, and his fangirls would have to pay dearly for their unforgivable lack of taste.

The reason for my expulsion from Belleview was that I had tried to get Drake framed for one of my deeds, an onslaught upon the property of mean teacher Linda Hayfer.

My father was prejudiced against Joshuah, and thence he was upset not about my deeds, but about my crush on the dork, and he decided that Los Angeles was not far enough from San Diego to warrant a permanent separation of me and Josh.

After having discussed the situation with my mom, he had come to the conclusion that the home of my aunt from Seattle was sufficiently far away from San Diego to strike a durable wedge between me and any bad influence from Josh and his family.

The decisions had been made, and a new life was to be begun.

* * *

**1.2 Good-Bye, San Diego!**

Now I was standing at San Diego Airport, rigged and ready for boarding a plane to take me away from home, and to the emerald city known for its rainy days that would never say good-bye.

The captain's voice admonished us to hurry to our seats and fasten the safety belts, as the machime was supposed to take off soon.

We would have to take a little detour in order to avoid a rain front crossing the states of Washington and Idaho. And for that avail, we were supposed to take off in time in order to prevent the airport of Seattle from running into trouble because of too big delays and the necessity of modifying the schedules.

At the airport of Seattle, I was awaited by my alone educating aunt Penelope[1:4] and her son Nevel.

The little bugger was like six years younger than me, and havi ng to babysit him was seen as a particular extra punishment. I had met him once, and he had got some uncanny aura. But I was not able to say why this was the case.

The plane was taking off into California' clear blue sky, bound for the grey clouds covering the state of Washington. I was gone from my home state, but not without swearing to come back the opportune day and make everyone pay dearly for getting me exiled — no exception whatsoever

* * *

**1.3 Lightning Storm**

There were thunder clouds around Seattle's bay when our plane approached the airport of the emerald city.

Flashes of lightning cleared up our vision every now and then.

Already as a little child, I had thought about possibility to turn the otherwise wasted energy behind thunders and lightning directly into useful electricity.

Maybe the weather here in Seattle was even more suuited for such a project than good old San Diego? But that may have been a deception.

Many believed that it never rained in southern California, and they were right … it poured down like a cataract. This occurred not so often, but when it did, hell used to break loose.

Whatever, we passengers of this flight from San Diego to Seattle were happy when the plane was finally touching the firm grounds of the state of Washington.

Finally, we were released from our flying metal cage and sent across the airport of Seattle in order to look for those awaiting us.

But the lightning storm was still there, even when I spotted my aunt and my little cousin.

Nevel Amadeus Papperman had grown a little buit since our last encounter, and he glared at me like with a thunderclap and flashes of lightning in his eyes, threatening me not to dare to mess with his business … whatever that was. This greeting matched perfectly with the weather prevailing outside the attendence hall of Seattle Airport.

So, here I was in the emerald city, a stormy start into my new life, indeed, but where was I going to tread next?

* * *

**1.4 Emerald City**

Bound for my nnew residence in uptown Seattle, I saw partly why this was called an emerald city. There seemed to be really a lot of plans top make the cultural metropole of the state of Washington appear as green as only possible, with parks and forrests. Unfortunately, a lot of this was still immature, even after decades of planning.

Back in San Diego, I had already started experimenting with genetic manipulation. My first success had been that of cloning a puppy, but this was just a start. I also wanted to create new sorts of plants by means of genertic manipulation and engineering in order to populate planet earth with them, including the deserts and the tundra.

Aunt Penelope halted her craft in front of my new home, an estate with a meadow.

Nevel jumpoed out of the car and crossed the streets quickly, but in a suffieciently careful manner.

Penelope explained that he was going to see Otis,[1:5] which, as she eplained upon my subsequent question, was sort of a llama, more precisely an alpaca. Well, I knew that alpacas were a representant of the genus of llamas, so there was not really a reason for being asinine about this detail.

The wooly mammal belonged to their neighbours' daughter Quinn, who as — according to my aunt — the most intelligent girl from Seattle. She had been at the same school as Nevel, until the last summer break. Then she had switched to an illustrious boarding school in the outskirts of Los Angeles, as one of the first girl in the school's history.

Nevel had been playing with the llama on and off whenever it was grazing the green meadows. He was also allowed to shear Otis when needed. He had thought a lot about the advantages of alpaca wool over others, and he was interested in running his own haberdashery specialised on rare yarns and rare tools such as scissors, needles, and pins. And he was adoring Quinn and had been very said because of her departure. "But now you are here for him."

I grinned, but I had to think about the situation.

Said Quinn was probably no other girl than Quinn Pensky, and her boarding school was no other than aforementioned Pacific Coast Academy. I had heard a bit about her and her obvious genius, although I had not come to see her.

In my absence, experts had seen Quinn Pensky as the shy high favourite of the upcoming state science fair, with a project that involved … genetic manipulation of green plants. More precisely, she was up to creating hybrids of severalfruit-bearing trees and shrubs in order to populate the world with enough fruits for everyone everywhere. Wait, that was what I was aiming for, too!

In other words, that neighbours' girl was both out for stealing my awards and my little cousin. Where was that coming to? Hello? Has anyone allowed her to do so? I was sure going to put up some sort of a challenge. I was surely not willing to leave her everything without a fight.

Now I was busy dragging my luggage to my new dormitory room.

Aunt Penelope told me that I was to be enrolled at the same school as Nevel, a renowned private school in the outskirts of Seattle named "Priarwood Prep". As the name suggested, the campus of this academy was located near or even inside the green forrests in front of the city gates.

x

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**Chapter 2 Priorwood — Junior Year**

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**2.1 Summer Break**

My first months at priorwood Prep had been cumbersome, because many things were so different at a prep school in Seattle than at a district school in San Diego. The expectations were very hard, and just having been always on the honour roll, even above Joshuah Nichols, did not mean that I would make it here as well. Unlike at Belleview, honours had to be earned hard, and they were not granted to me just because the rest of the class was a bunch of idiots.

Sophomore year was now over, and for the first time in my life I had failed making it to the honour roll, but I was still close and up to climbing higher and higher in rank, finally making it into the position of the valedictorian in my senior year.

So, this was summer break, and I was spending some weeks in San Diego, but also part of my time in a summer camp, not a really exciting or challenging one, but at least one without Quinn Pensky whom I wanted to avoid at any cost.

Nevel had hitherto always been nice to me, notwithstanding his grim facial expressions which were just the way he had been born, and there was nothing to do about it. But he was still rhapsodising my country-wide worst rival, Quinn Pensky, and this was a painful thorn in my side. I was not able to talk to Nevel about this, and I had to prove him that I was the greatest geek girl in the world, and not Quinn.

But now back to the summer camp in the valley of Yakima, a location in the less urbanised mountain ranges of the state of Washington. I had feared that it was outside any trace of civilisation, but this was not the case, at least not the city of Yakima itself.

The mountain ranges were a popular winter sports area, but in summer, there was hardly any snow. Compared to Seattle, the summer weather was even a whole lot more inviting, making it ideal especially for summer camps.

Nevel had not come with me, as he wanted to show Quinn how well he had learned caring for Otis. He was allergic to many germs, including alpaca germs, but he used a detergent making him immune to those.

I was one of the oldest kids of the camp and thus forced to take responsibility for the younger ones, and this was a bit naughty.

We were playing basketball, advised by a certain Terrence Bo, a substitute at Seattle's professional team. Not being one of the stars had made him a bit grumpy and weird over time. He forced us to stack taco shells on a wooden stick, although this was nowhere near related to basketball, was it?

One of the few boys in my age, a certain Arthur Grdstein,[2:1] tried to hit on me, but I threw him simply into the meandring stream, and he turned into the laughingstock of the younger kids.

Seeing the nature out here in the valley at summer time made me even more want to manipulate and to recreate it, by means of genetic engineering. Mankind has to grow finally uo and show the absolute superiority of mind over nature. The latter is slave to the rhythm of the season, but our wonderous mind is absolute, not dependent in any way on space and mind.

Fortunately, this boring summer camp was now coming to an end, and I was rigged and ready to start into the new academic year, hell bent on beating the honour roll.

* * *

**2.2 New Year — New Pupils**

During the last term, I had been the new girl at school, fighting with all those hitherto unbeknownst people, be it teachers, students, or staff. Nevel had tried to help me, but he was an elementary school kid, while I was a high school lass, and we were in different buildings most of te time.

But the beginning of the academic year was like rerolling the dice once more.

It meant new classes, new subjects, new teachers, and lots of other new things.

As usual at this school, our dean Belinda Peeloff was starting the new year with a long speech which made me yawn like a hyena, although she was way easier to bear than for example, Mrs. Hayfer at our old school.

Nevel had got the same problems as I, we were good dealing with abstract things, but extremely awkward with people. If it had not been like this, I would not have failed miserable in showing Joshuah that I had got feelings for him and that he was better off as he was instead of trying to follow Drake's way.

Instead, I had snuck Mrs. Car into a class room and tried to get Drake Parker framed for this, but the honour council had been able to figure that I had been behind it[2:2] … bear with it!

And Nevel had always been causing trouble at his district school because he was smarter than the teachers and the other pupils altogether, and so he had to be removed and stuffed into Priorwood.

Miss Peeloff was also my teacher for social studies, and I had heard last year that she could be very demanding, but also a lot of fun. She also announced proudly that she had hired a new teacher for History, Philosophy, Greek, and Latin, a real Roman priest named Father MacCurdy.[2:3] I had not been taught the Greek language at Belleview and not much Latin for that matter, either, so this was going to be quite some challenge, but certainly feasible for a wonder mind like me … evil grin …

* * *

**2.3 Nevel's Crush**

The new academic year was a few days old, when I found my little favourite cousin strangely confused, especially in the mornings before classes and right after the end of those. So, what was going on?

Nevel looked at a group of bypassing girls, and his eyes went glassy.

I gasped, thinking "Good grief! Does my little cousin have a crush on a girl?" Of course, boys don't like to talk to their elder sisters or cousin straight away in such a situation, and it was better not to mess with him. At least it was a girl from Priorwood Prep, and not my worst rival, Quinn, which I had already feared — apparently nor not much reason — since my arrival in Seattle.

It was better for me watching the situation for a few days and be there for him in the case he really needed that.

Likewise, I was better off watching the situation here at Priorwood with respect to possible boys. Those I had encountered here were little promising. It was really hard to find a smrt boy that was prous of being a geek instead of trying to be cool like certain kinsmen … yeah, I was not willing to make the same mistake again as I had done with Josh and his totally insane family. Homecoming was coming closer and closer, and even junior prom was going to conclude this academic year, so it would be uncool to be there alone, but that was still the safer alternative when compared to a repeated catastrophe.

Nevel was more and more distracted, even on our way home in aunt Penelope's car. Of course I would not talk to her about my observations, because nevel would certainly have hated me for doing something like that. He was not even up to playing chess with me, although he had recently sworn to get back at me for my last trick.

But of course I was not able to watch him forever in his mental pains.

* * *

**2.4 Leanne Carter**

Two days later, I was not able any longer to wait for Nevel's situation for clearing up, so I grabbed him right after breakfast and aske hin, "so what is her name?" I knew how risky it was, for if he had wanted me to know, he would have told me on sote a lot earlier.

So, not, unexpected, Nevel glared at me, replying "I do not know what you are talking about. You hurt me, get off me!"

I shook my head, dearing to say, "I am trying to help you. It is not possible to continue like this. Your thoughts have been clouded by someone, and you risk turning into a vulgar tween boy, whereas you should aim for higher goals."

He looked rather aghast at me, and then he sighed deeply. A few minutes later he was able to talk again. "Leanne Carter, a seventh grade girl …"

I had not yet been long enough at Priorwood Prep to know each and every middle school kid, and so that one was new for me.

Nevel explained that Leanne had won pageants many times straight.

I gasped, as she was — judging according to the above statement — most certainly not uncomely, while Nevel was … not exactly an Addonis, and in addition, almost two years younger. Nevel risked turning into the laughingstock of the elementary and middle school kids at Priorwood, and that was not what he deserved.

In addition,it was so obvious that Nevel would not find the right words when trying to ask her, and he would possibly commit something like kissing her without permission.

I was not a master of diplomacy, either, for otherwise I would not have been convicted for my misdeeds at Belleview and expelled from there and sent up to Seattle insteads of staying in California. "What is her … talent … at the pageants?"

Nevel shrugged. "She sometimes plays the saxophone …"

I smiled, because I knew that he had practised with his piano and a recorder for two years already, and this meant that there was something to build on. There were still a few months left until the school's talent show, and that was maybe an occasion for Nevel to do something with Leanne and lessen the distance. It was still a risk, but it was worth being taken.

* * *

**2.5 Nabucco**

But now it was my turn to help Nevel, who had hitherto not been able to talk to his very crush, Leanne Carter.

I ran into her in the cafeteria of Priorwood Prep.

Unlike at Belleview, there was no strict separation into areas for elementary, middle and high school kids, we were all treated as one. Nevertheless, there were reserved tables of certain cliques, although Belinda Peeloff had often enough encouraged and admonished us not to stick to those unwritten rules.

In the beginning, I had been condemned to sitting at some outsider table somewhere where nobody was able to notice me, and this had changed during the last year. But I needed to do a whole lot better in order to be eligible for the valedictorian's task at my graduation.

But I had already heard horrible sories about kids that have dropped out of the best tables and were now forced to eat somewhere on the floor or even in the toilets. This would really be a big loss for them. The main reason for such a downfall would be that of hanging out too much with losers, or what the majority of popular kids called them.

For Nevel, this meant not much good, as it was now more than likely that his crush would not even give him a chance to say a word in her presence, and even less to practise for the talent show with her.

Leanne Carter was, as expecxted, one of the most popular kids of Priorwood Prep, and hence had her steady place at the best table of the whole cafeteria, regardless of the time of the day.

I was not ready to give up for that, as Nevel was otherwise going to be bitterly disappointed, which I did not want him to be. I snuck up to Leann. "Hi, nice dress you are wearing …"

Leanne choked. "Do you really think so? Well, it is just what I can afford. Who are you anyways? You haven't been here for year, have you?"

I nodded. "Melinda Crenshaw, from San Diego."

Philip Brownley,[2:4] the cass president of the freshmen and of the whole student council, asked Leanne whether she wanted to talk to me. Whgen he saw her nod in a solemn manner, he allowed me to sit at the popular table for a few minutes.

Having sat down, I admitted to talking to her because of my cousin. "Nevel is really young, two years younger than you — or so I believe — but he is a really good pianist and a recorder player, and he would certainly be a great backup for your saxophone." I did not yet mention his crush on the pageant queen.

Leanne nodded. "Yeah, I play the sax fairly well, but what if I can't hold a candle to his skills in platying the piano?"

I shrugged. "You could try and find out?"

Leanne sighed. "Well, OK, that may be an idea, but I have got many talents, and playing the saxophone is just one of them. So I am not yet sure whether I will pick this for the talent show."

I shrugged. "I guess … you do know best what to do at the talent show."

Leanne nodded solemnly, and she wondered: "What sort of music does Nevel play best?"

I did not really know, although I had been practising the violin for some time, but never made it as far as Nevel with his instruments. Really, my only reason for picking the violin had been that Albert Einstein, one of the greatest physicists ever, had also played it, or at least he is frequently depicted having done so. "He is not into rock music, so much I know, so probably baroque, classis, romantic, maybe jazz."

Leanne smiled. "I am not really picky. Does he like the slaves' choir from Giuseppe Verdi's _Nabucco_? I have started playing this on another instrument years ago … not really an instrument, but … bear with it! It was my start into the world of music."

I remembered my own childish attempts of making music with all sorts of items found in the kitchen or the house, thus I probably understood what she meant. "I think so … Nevel likes mournful tunes."

Leann panted heavily. "I will think about it, and if I decide to make music, I will come back to him as soon as possible."

I smiled. "He will be happy to practise with you!" I though to myself, "oh yeah, he would, his heart would explode for excitement …" I sung for myself:

* * *

Va, pensiero, sulle ale dorate!  
Va, ti posa sui clivi, sui colli!  
Ove olezzano, tepide e molli  
Le aure dolci del suolo natal.

Del Girodano le rive saluta  
Di Sionne le torri atterrate.[2:5]

* * *

It was like mourning my own loss of my home in San Diego, including Joshuah Nichols.

* * *

**2.6 Dolorem Ipsum**

As aforementioned, I wanted to shine even in the old languages which I had not studied much back at Belleview. But here they were rare but respected electives, indispensable for anyone wanting to boast on the honour rolls, and MacCurdy was not giving away good marks for nothing.

If chubbiness was painful, the teacher would have cried all day and all night … OK, just a stupid side remark.

But it lead me to my project for Latin which was based on a text commonly abused as a placeholder on web sites.

Cicero, the Roman intellectual of the times of Julius Cæsar, or something like that had written a few lines about pain, saying that nobody wants to experience pain just for the sake of it, in his _De Finibus Bonorum Et Malorum_.

When used in web sites, the text was commonly perverted and corrupted. My project was of course thought as a proper presentation of the ancient philosopher.

Alas, I was not able to avoid wondering whether Cicero was really right in his evaluation of pain, especially in the case of Joshuah Nichols who was a real painseeker, given that he preferred to hang out with Drake instead of following his true inclinations.

In any case, I would have to invest quite some painful efforts into preparing a good presentation of the work of Cicero for the Latin classes, and I better started now or never.

* * *

**2.7 Oranas**

Biology classes, taught by Doctor Lange,[2:6] were usually lame and boring, but his talks about the digestion of fruits in the human body had triggered some thoughts.

Using genetic manipulation, Quinn Pensky had tried to produce a mixture between apples and bananas, to be called banapples, but she had not made it very far — or so has been claimed on her scientific blog.

I did not know the details, but it was not really much of a surprise, as the fruits of the banana shrub were really sort of berries, but apples … well, the part most people enjoy eating is not really the fruit, with which I mean the sum of pericarp, mesocarp, and endocarp, but accessory tissue. The fruit is just the core of the apple which may taste icky. The whole false fruit of the apple is known as a pome, from the old Latin words for apple, which brought me back to my project in Latin, but I had not really got the time to think about it. A mix between an apple and a banana would have been plain awkward.

Whatever the situation, in order to outdo Quinn and to convonce at least my little cousin that I was really a lot better than her, I had to create a mix between fruits that actually worked.

And it would be definitely needed, as cultivated bananas, as everyone knew, could only be raised by taking and replanting offshoots. Their seeds were rudimentary and infertile. Genetic engineering with advance means was the only way to make our bananas resistent to pests and pernicious herbs.

I had to come to think that hesperidæ, fruits such as the orange, the lemon, and so on, were sorts of berries, too.

In the spirit of Quinn's bananapples, I would name ta cross between bananas and oranges either bananges or oranas. I had to think a bit about the question which of those two words sounded tastier. Of course the fruits would be the same using either name.

It would be too late for this year's science fair, though, but — or so I hoped — not too late for convincing my own cousin of my intellectual superiority over Quinn Pensky at least to Nevel, for if not even my little cousin was convinced of it, hardly anyone else would ever acknowledge this as a fact.

* * *

**2.8 Leanne's No**

Not much later, our door bell rang, and Nevel's heart started standing still. He was waiting for Leanne who had announced to show possibly up tonight in order to discuss the possibbilities of a cooperation for the talent show. As expected, Nevel was so close to a power failure due to this kind of excitement which was impossible to bear for his brittle heart.

I went to the door in order to open it, as he was hardly able to breathe. And we had guessed right.

Leanne stood in the door frame. She smiled while adjusting a long tubular box, which was probably holding her saxophone. "Hello … so where is your cousin and your piano?"

Nevel had recovered enough from the first attack of power overthrow to be able to join me to the door. He had donned his finest suit and a tie, ready to shake hands with his crush. "I have washed my hands before playing the piano. Do you know that gazillions of germs reside on our skin?"

Leanne smiled. "I have heard something like that." She shrugged. "It is indeed a bad idea to touch your fine tuned instrument with dirty fingers. I use gloves, at least when I am not at home." She unpacked a pair of gauntlets.

We walked to the room holding the piano, not a really old one, but one that worked.

Leanne hated the thought of killing elephants for ivory, so she wanted to make sure that the white keys were not real.

Nevel shook his head. "The white keys are made of wood and painted white … I don't know whether the paint is ecologically OK." He was a bit embarrassed because he had not been aware of Leanne's ethical principles. "The trade with ivory has been declared illegal years before the production of this instrument."

Leanne sighed for relief. Then she unpacked her saxophone.

I walked away to the kitchen, where aunt Penelope had prepred some spicy dip named tapenade, containing olives, capers, and garlic. Well, proper tapenade was also supposed to contain anchovies, but I wagered to guess that Leanne was a stern vegetarian, and then such a faux pas would have been really embarrassing.

But fortunately, this green salsa did not contain any fishy stuff, and it was thus OK for our guest. I also picked some white bread and dragged it into the foyer.

Nevel was warming up his fingers by playing some accords. "I have tuned that piano two days ago, and it works still like a spell." Indeed, he had got an absolute audition, and he would not have survived the embarrassment of backing Leanne up with a far from percectly tunes instrument.

Leanne took care for her saxophone, as it needed to be not too warm and not too cold in oreder to allow for the production of nice sounds and accords.

Then Nevel showed Leanne the score sheets. They needed to improvise a lot in order to make a decent symphony of the tume of the _Slaves__'__s Choir_ with the uniusual arrangement of just a paino and a saxophone.

The pageant queen approved of his plans, and she nodded solemnly in order to indicate that she was ready to start.

At the same time, I arranged the tapenade and the white bread on the table, along with a smoothie for each of them, as they would sure need a break, sooner or later. Then I walked into another room in order to let them practise alone, while I was up to thinking more about how to cross oranges and bananas.

But the sound of the pianoi playing the same old melody did not really leave me alone.

Finally, the break was there, and I decided to look after them again, as Nevel was not unlikely to rush things a bit, and then it was better for me to restrain him.

Leanne sighed. "OK, so far it was nice, but I have to tell you something, and it is good that your cousin is here for you."

Nevel looked at her, his face one shade of crimson.

Leanned explained, "see, the girls of my class have noticed something and told me about it, and you should know that they do. You have got a crush on me, right?" She sighed deeply, which was not a good sign at all.

Nevel went all pale, and he was unable to answer in a human manner. He just kept on stammering a few inconsistent groups of syllables.

Leanne continued, "I don't want to hurt you, but it is not really a good idea, I think."

Nevel started weeping.

And so I took him, allowing him to wet my skirt with his tears. "OK, Leanne, I guess you are too embarrassed as a pageant queen to hang out with a not quite so hot and somewhat younger boy, it would make you uncool." That was of course putting it mildly.

Leanne shook her head. "You don't really know what you are talking about, do you? I don't care about the table of the populars, and I am not embarrassed for Nevel's appearance. If there is a reason for embarrassment, it is my low talent for the saxophone."

I felt flabbergasted.

Leanne explained, "see, Nevel, you play the piano, but I rather play **with** the saxophone. I just like it. You are really serious with your music."

I sighed deeply, for now I was embarrassed for my inappropriate guesses.

Nevel would at least need a few hours, if not days, in order to get over it, and they should not practise together until then.

But Leanne assured that she would be flattered if Nevel backed up her saxophone play with his piano. "By the way, while I don't have a boyfriend there is someone who …" She blushed. "Well, he's so far away, but, on the other hand, so close. Maybe I will tell you … some day." Now it was better for her to go. "Keep good care of your cousin!"

I nodded. "Will sure do!"

Maybe some day, Nevel would have to be there for me in such a situation.

* * *

**2.9 Blue Mood**

During the next few days, my young cousin was really depressive. He had not been taking all of Leanne's answer too well, and he was hardly able to eat and sleep and drink. At least we was not unable to play the piano, repeating Bach's requiem over and over.

It wasn't much of a help that Leanne had declared that she was by absolutely no means mad at Nevel. As a pageant queen, she was accustomed to boys having a crush on her, and Nevel was definitely one of the more civilised cases, as completely opposed to certain dirty creeps whose name she did not mention, as she did not believe in revenge and teaching those perverts hard lessons.

I hoped for his blue mood to pass by as soon as possible, as he could have done a lot better. He had thought abut making his own web site named, to be known as _Nevelocity_, but in his current mood, this was absolutely impossible.

I even suggested him to go to the Pensky's and feed Otis, aforementioned alpaca belonging to my worst rival.

But, suprprisingly, the wooly neighbour was not feeling any batter. My guess was that it was feeling depressed due to the absence of Quinn. But Nevel believed that he had infected the llama with his acute mood disorder.

The parents of my archenemy were still clueless, and they had not even found a competent veterinary, as alpacas were really rare in the state of Washington.

The rain here in Seattle was not helping in any way chasing away the depressions, be it those of Nevel or the alpaca.

Maybe a few days in California would have helped here? But it was still the middle of the term, and thus there was no way to get Nevel there.

* * *

**2.10 Battle Robot**

I had been looked up Quinn Pensky's latest science blog, and there she described a new battle robot she had built in order to demonstrate that girls were able to build such a thing, too.[2:7]

She had been challenged by some arrogant nerd named Wayne Gilbert, also known as "Fire Wire".

Her war robot was much smaller than this, but vastly superior due to its built-in laser beam weapon.

Of course, this looked like a challenge for me. Sooner or later, I wanted to build a little robot with a mighty phaser weapon, let it face that of Quinn, and then destroy it in an eclatant battle, especially in front of Nevel, demonstration who was the boss.

I better started making my plans for a most powerful invention, the photon cannon.

This year's science fair, I had flunked a bit. Unfortunatelt, my attempt of transforming thunderclouds into useful electricity had backfired and blown up the whole apparatus during the Washington state fair, and I was not qualified for the national science fair where I would have had the chance of blasting away at Quinn Pensky, wait, she had been defeated by middle school guy Simon Nelson Cook from James K. Polk in Santa Clarita?

OK, this was this year, but there was one last occasion left for me to strike at the national level and wreak havoc.

* * *

**2.11 Otis At PCA**

Finally, veterinary Doctor Lange, who, as aforementioned, happened to be also my and nevel's teacher for biology, had diagnosed Otis with depression, and, just as I had guessed, the absence of Quinn was the problem.

Pets were illegal at Pacific Coast Academy, and big ones such as alpacas were not possible to be hidden in some corner.

But for some unbeknownst reason, Quinn's friends Zoey and Nicole had convinced their headmaster, Carl Rivers, to give Quinn's alpaca a special pass for limited time. Otherwise the geek princess would have even run away from the campus and been expelled.

Of course the wooly monster was not able to make it from Seattle to Los Angeles without human company, and so I had suggested to make them send Nevel with him. The sun of California would help him to recover from the blues. As Doctor Lange was also coming with the alpaca, this would count at as a field trip, would it?

Hell, Linda Peeloff had declared to make it a field trip for his whole biology class. And I knew that there were many other intersting things for the kids to see over there.

This trip was thus going to comfort both Nevel and the alpaca.

Unfortunately, I had forgotten that Zoey Brooks and Nicole Bristow were more or less the presidents of the Drake Parker fan club at Pacific Coast Academy, but now it was toolate. I had sent my little cousin into the lion's den.

* * *

**2.12 Nevel is back.**

Finally, the trip to Los Angeles was over, apparently a plain success.

Doctor Lange and Nevel were about to return Otis to its stable.

My cousin appeared stoped beyond any hitherto beknownst measure, and not just in comparison to his blue phase preceding the trip to Los Angeles.

Of course I wondered for the reasons, as just a few hours of Californian sunshine were definitely not supposed to be able to cut it quite.

Oh no, there was this glow in his eyes again, a glow that reminded me fatally of Nevel's face of his early crush on Leanne Carter.

So he had checked out some other girl, but whom? I so needed to find it out.

In the best case, it was someone from his class that would now hang out with him.

But what if Nevel had got something for a Pacific Coast Academy girl? My suspense increased more and more.

Once Otis was taken well care of, I grabbed Nevel's collar and pulled him into the house entrance. "Who is your new crush? I know that there's something like that behind your moot, denial is useless."

Nevel replied in a stammering way, "you don't know her, but her name is Zoey Brooks. She is a hot blond freshman, and she makes fashionable outfits. She has organised the whole visit to Pacific Coast Academy for Otis and us kids."

My eyes bugged out due to having heard about Nevel's crush on Drake's major fangirl. I had never met her, but I knew enough about her to be just on the brink of utter despair.

Zoey was no other person than the one who had organised last year's concert of Satan incarnate alias Drake Parker at Pacific Coast Academy, so she was a total fan of him.

Drake's manager had required 5,000 bucks for the concert, but his blond fan leader had somehow achieved to reduce this sum to zilch, well she had left him the rights for the design of his outfit, or even just the shirts with the logo of his band. And now the same Zoey had jinxed my little cousin into oblivion.

If I had made it to Pacific Coast Academy last year, I would have made Zoey pay dearly for worshipping Drake Parker, but now she was going to pay thrice for having that extremely bad influence on Nevel and having jinxed his heart.

* * *

**2.13 Spring Break In California**

Spring was breaking, and this meant a few days off school.

For the first time since my expuulsion from Belleview and my transfer to Seattle, I would return to my home sweet home, sunny California, and not just to my parents in San Diego.

On my way there, I was up to balancing some open account with a certain blond wench from California's most elitary boarding school.

Nevel was coming with me, and he still had got those hungry eyes, watching out for Zoey Brooks. Just as during his early crush on Leann Carter, he was totally unattentive.

The plane touched down from the clear blue Californian spring sky, touching the soil of city where the lights of fame would never die.

Pacific Coast Academy was not too close to the airport, though.

Unfortunately a more or less reliable informer had told us that Zoey and Quinn, along with a few other kids, were probably bound for Santa Barbara to the estate of somne rich creep who happened to own half of Hollywood.

Of course we could not afford to hire a limousine to follow them there, and those estates were too well guarded. Oh well.

* * *

**2.14 Running Into Drake And Josh**

This was the attendence hall of Los Angeles Airport, and it was so much longer than that of Seattle or San Diego. It was easy to get lost in there, so I told Nevel to cling tightly to me, no, I had to hold him, because he had still just got Zoey on his mind. It still hurt me seeing him waste his feelings on a screaming fangirl of no other than Drake Parker.

OK, I had just thoyght once again about the devil in person, and who was about to cross my way? No other than Drake Parker and my former crush Joshuah Nichols. I did not know what they had to do at this airport, but it was not exactly going to please me. I tried to find a way to hide in the mass of people, but havibg to care about Nevel made this impossible.

Bang! Nevel ran staright into Joshuah … the elephant was hardly to avoid, anyways.

Drake 's guitar shivered like a willow in the wind.

Josh growled, "watch your feet, you bugger! Oh, look who is here …" He was holding a device in the hands, like a palm top for some special purpose.

Drake chimed in. "The creature is back! Aren't you supposed to be in that asylum?"

"I am in a honourable prep school in Seattle, you jerk!"

Drake giggled.

Josh explained that he was now Drake's manager, and he was going to get him a contract for an important Hollywood concert. But really, they were in Los Angeles because they had put Megan into the wrong plane, sending her to Los Angeles instead of Denver.[2:8]

Megan, the little sister of Drake in Nevel's age, had been the real cause for my expulsion, for without ther help, Josh would never have figured that I had been the one to infribge Hatfer's property in order to get the disgusting jerk framed.

Josh also boasted with his new G,O., a device storing many pieces of music.

I took a closer look, and figured that it was no such thing. "This is no G,O., it is a device cpontaining the data of the national bank, allowing to make banknotes. You better go yto the police before getting into trouble with the FBI, and with the criminals whom you stole it from."

Drake wanted to print some, but this would of course have been illegal.

Josh denied to have known it. "There must have been some confusion in the plane. But I still don't trust you, you are just envious because you have not got a G.O. Nice try, but … bleh!"

I told him, "you may trust me, or the inscription of your tomb stone."

He twitched. "I don't want to read my own tomb stone!"

Drake remarked, "Josh … I don't think that it is possible to read it … you would be dead if …"

Josh poked Drake. "I know this."

I decided to call officer Vega from Los Angeles county police for the two idiots. Then we had to hide until their arrival.

The criminals were still following Josh, but they would run into the trap set up by officer Vega.

Then I dared to ask Josh, "would you please be my junior prom partner?" I explained that I had only done everything because I had loved Josh and wanted to save him from Drake's bad influence.

His eyes bugged out.

Drake grabbed him amnd told him sternly to refrain from doing so.

Josh laughed. "Nice pick up line, but I still don't trust you, never will!"

It was so obvious that only Drake's influence had made him say this.

OK, this was clear enough. I grabbed Nevel, and we walked away.

* * *

**2.15 At PCA**

While it was not possible for us to catch Zoey and her gang in order to clear up the situation for good, there was still an occasion for us at the end of the summer break, right before our return to Seattle.

Mom and dad had been awaiting us in San Diego.

We had had to come up with massive lies in order to justify our detour with Los Angeles, such as cheaper last minute tickets and so on.

But now spring break was about to end, and we had finally been able to snuck to the campus of Pacific Coast Academy in order to wreak havoc.

Zoey and her gang was back from Santa Barbara where they had been the shooting the pilot of a game show known as _Gender Defenders_.[2:9] It was a boys versus girls thing. The girls had won, because Zoey had been so strong. We were now watching pictures of the encounter.

In one of the games, Chase Natthews and Zoey stood on islands in a pool, and had to push the other into the water, using a padded staff. But finally, Zoey had lost her staff, and Chase had failed finishing her off, but, instead, slipped and hit his wet bed.

It was rumoured, and the inpression from the pictures confirmed it, that Chase had had a crush on Zoey, explaining his weird behaviour. He had never fessed in almost two years, and always come up with more lies and cheap excuses in order to hide his feelings which he should have confessed. OK, this was a parallel to me and Joshuah, wass't it? Maybe … or maybe not … I was a bit confused.

So, now I had to clean up the situation between Nevel and Zoey. I walked up to Zoey Brooks and accused her downright of having seduced my little cousin.

Indeed Nevel had hardly ever said a word since we had made it to California, but his hungry eyes made it clear whom he had been thinking about all the time.

Zoey denied everything. "What are you saying? Nevel is cool, but I don't hanker after boys of the age of my little brother, Dustin."

Nevel started sobbing, as he had done when hearing Leanne Carter's aforementioned sermon. "So, we won't marry and run a haberdashery together?"

Well, it was apparently once more a totally one sided thing, and Zoey had not been aware of what she had done to Nevel by being just niece to him. OK, there was another one of Nevel's depression I would have to take care of. But she was still a dangerous Drake Parker fan girl — or so I assumed. "Maybe you have just been so addicted to Drake's foul charms that you deliberately hurt other boys,who do like you, especially … Chase Matthews."

Zoey gasped."All lies … Drake is a great poprock performer, and there is nothing wrong with him … but I am not a horny groupie, just a fan that had seen him once in her life in a concert here on the campus. I just happen to have organised this, but not because of hankering after him, that would be sick. And concerning Chase … we are just friends … you understand? Friends … wait, you haven't got any, right?"

Unfortunately, this was so … true … and not a lie at all. But I had to tell her stories about Drake and his thousands of mistresses, five per week at least.

We walked past the campus fountain, where Zoey found her new cellular phone, a "tek mate". It had fallen into the water and was thus virtually beyond repair … but not with my skills. I fixed the telecommunication device, and Zoey read her new messages, one of them being from Chase:

"I love you."

I better left Zoey alone in order to talke care of my cousin.

What would become of Chase and Zoey? I will come back to that topic upon a later opportunity.

* * *

**2.16 Alone At Junior Prom**

This was my junior prom, and it was a complete failure inspite of having made the honour roll with ease. I had hoped until the last moment for a change of mind by Joshua Nichols and thus not tried to go for another partner, but everything had been in utter vain.

Of course it would have been a long trip for him. but I would have made the reverse trip as well if he had invited me.

Maybe he was — certainly instigated by his foul step brother — now going to his own junior prom with some cheap loose girl, as no other would respect him any longer.

I imagined a tomb stone reading "Josh and Mindy … requiescat in pacem!"

We were now finally apart and I was now better going to look for a new direction in life.

Fortunately, Nevel was here with me in order to ease my mental pain.

* * *

**Chapter 3 Priorwood — Senior Year**

* * *

**3.1 Summer With Nevel**

I should have spent part of the summer break in San Diego, but I decided against that.

My perverted parents were not worthy of my presence, and my feelings for Joshuah Nichols had gone finally down the drain due to his foul loyality to a step brother who had only abused him mentally since their parents had started their adulterous relationship and turned blind to my feelings.

I wanted to spend the weeks with my cousin Nevel and stand by him, my only loyal relative for the last one and a half years, and probably for several years to come, inspite of the troubles that his various crushes had already caused, and inspite of his ongoing admiration for my worst rival.

Nevel was only slowly recovering from having been turned down by the blond Mary Sue from Pacific Coast Academy.

Strangely, I was now sad because nothing had come out of his crush on Zoey Brooks. She was foru years older than him, but if she had given him a chance, not necessariily now, but in a few years, they would have been able to grow into a cool couple — or so I imagagined.

And all that bounced around in my head just a few monbths after I had been despairing because of Nevel's feelings for a loose fangirl hankering insanely after Drake. Yes, I had been so thoroughly wrong about the blond Mary Sue. She definitely did not justify Drake's ruthless jerkish demeanour, she just had not been aware of it, as the fledgling rock idol's fame outside San Diego was only about to start.

In particular, she was a loyal elder sister for her Dustin, and she would never have done anthing to encourage him to become like Drake, the worst jerk of California.

So, what were we doing while awaiting slowly the end of the end of the end of summer?

I helped him building his web site, _Nevelocity_, and then he helped me with my invention of a universal power generator.

Nevel was still admiring Quinn, but he also saw the great potential of my invention which was not a copy of one of Quinn's, something that he would not have appreciated.

* * *

**3.2 Back At Priorwood**

The first day of my new and last academic year had come.

For Nevel, it was the begin of middle school, and thus sort of a new orientation as well.

I hoped sincerely that he would not have once more a crush on a girl as aloof as Leanne Carter and as Zoey Brooks.

Once more, Belinda Peeloff had gathered us students, teachers, and staff in the aula of the major hall of Prriorwood Prep in order to give a speech.

Some of us had already got their schedule for this year.

Our middle school kids, such as Nevel, had still got classes staying almost together for three years, barring electives and gym. This had got some advantages, but it would have killed me not getting away from a disgusting creep like Drake for that much time.

My hopes were high, but I wanted not just to make it again to the honour roll, I wouyld not be content with anything less than the valedictorian's position.

And of course my real goal for his year was a victory in the national science fair.

Belinda Peeloff announced some strong improvement of science classes. "We have hired a new teacher for physics, biology, and chemistry, Welcome Mr. Sweeny from Santa Clarita in California!"

I applauded for the change, but the identity of Mr. Sweeney was not really encouraging.

He had previously taught at James K. Polk middle school, and his best student had been Simon Nelson Cook, the winner of several Californian science fairs even against Quinn Pensky, and that was certainly not without significance. But he had always been feared by most of his students.

I have recently discovered the blog of Simon's best friend, Edmond Bigby, on the interweb, a veritable _Declassified School Survival Guide_, and Sweeney was described there as an extremely stern and tricky teacher. But my hope for a brilliant last year at Priorwood Prep was still alive, and I was going to show who was the boss.

There were some other new teachers around, both for me and for Nevel.

Now I finally received my full schedule, and it was really as tight as can be.

* * *

**3.3 Miss Fielder**

There were also some obligatory non academic classes, such as arts.

Our teacher here was Miss Candy Fielder, [3:1] a really pedantic and boring teacher with absolutely no sense for creativity — or so I guessed from our first lessons.

We were working about the history of the red colour in art throughout the century and had to draw lines in a variety of shades of red.

Unfortunately, she reminded me so infinitely much of my former crush from my life in San Diego in southern California.

Joshuah Nichols had been a more or less great great designer[3:2] using all sorts of colours, not just red, but it triggered a red alert within my tortured mind.

But now that I was finally on my way of being over him, I was reminded to his character by my new art teacher. That was so absolutely not fair by any stretch of the word.

There needed to be something about that uncreative way of teaching. Fielder always stressed the virtues of patience, just as Josh had used to do, inspite of suffering from frequent twitching attacks.

Maybe some more creative art teacher was needed, one able to teach better things than drawing red lines up and down, forth and back, left and right, as that lady in red seemed to do?

Maybe some more creative art teacher was needed, one able to teach better things than drawing red lines up and down, forth and back, left and right, as that lady in red seemed to do? But was it easy to find a decent and creative teacher for arts ready to teach at a school like Priorwood Prep?

According to my knowledge, creative arts, and especialy teaching it, was only well-paid in New York and Los Angeles, due to the vicinity of Hollywood and the Broadway.

And it looked like I had to do some research.

* * *

**3.4 The Laboratory**

Mr. Sweeny was not only Nevel's teacher for general science and my teacher for chemistry, he was also responsible for the scientific laboratory of our school, and thus for my attempts of winning the national science fair, as my invention was located in this place.

Last year, the laboratory had been pretty much hopelessly dilapidated, but with the arrival of this new teachers, things were changing a lot.

Now I was working on something that should turn into a universal power coverter, a device extracting enegy from cosmic radiation and turning it into useful energy. I had to be very careful in my experiments, for, unlike in my attempts to cross bananas and oranges, each and every detail counted, and everything had to be measured as precisely as only possible. Failing this, all hopes would have gone with the wind.

And in this moment, Mr. Sweeny came in order to control us kids from the science club working here.

Of course I was doing almost all of the work, as most of the other members of the club were just looking at me in a dumb and only vaguely interested way.

Sweeny grinned and wondered what was going on here. "Why do you all waste your time by looking?"

Ashley Gonzalez,[3:3] a sophomore girl, glared aghast when she heard the teacher's voice, and, after several seconds of utter silence, she answered, "Mindy is so far above us, it ain't no use trying to even try to understand what she is doing." And Ashley was the valedictorian of the sophomores, even superior to her aforementioned boyfriend Philip Brownley.

Needless to say, if even some genius like Ashley deemed all these efforts of understanding my work hopeless, there was even less of a chance to get anyone else to follow be a valuable help in my efforts. So I better did not get stuck, or otherwise I would be lost in the prison of my own hopes and dreams.

Mr. Sweeney shook his head. "What is so hard to understand? It is as simple as that … Miss Crenshaw is … er … wait … no …" He glared on and off at my protocol in order to try to try to try to make sense of it, but he appeared to have failed miserably.

Ashley Gonzalez told Sweeney to give it up. "Mindy's genius is not of our world, is it?"

Smoke billowed forth from Sweeney's capital orifices, as he was probably not willing to agree with Ashely's judgment inspite of not really understanding what I was doing. In order to hide his embarrassment from the other students, he ordered them to clean up the laboratory room, not having a better reason to tell them than "because I say so!"

I shrugged and kept on working on my power converter.[3:4]

* * *

**3.5 Happy Birthday**

OK, finally eighteen, … that meant a lot more freedoms, but also a lot more responsibility.

Most people used to celebrate their birthday with friends and family, but for some reason, there was little for me left.

As mentioned by Zoey Brooks, I had not got any friends, neither in San Diego nor in Seattle.

My parents didn't matter anything anymore to me, so it was better for me to hope that those creeps would remain as silent as only possible.

So what about aunt Penelope and cousin Nevel?

A year ago, upon turning seventeen, they had awoken me with a birthday cake. So they had certainly known my birthday.

But everything seemed a lot different today. During the whole breakfast, there had been absolutely no reason to assume that it was anything but just another usual day of the week for them.

The situation was no much difference at Priorwood Prep.

Bitterly disappointed, I decided to spend a few extra hours in the laboratory, although it had not been my plam to do much in here for my birthday party.

Only just before dinner, I was about to drive home in my borrowed car. But Nevel jumped in front of my standing car, although I had expected him home long since, as he used to do so with the mother of some friend whenever I spent extra hours in the laboratory. Maybe he had been waiting in order to congratulate me — or so I hap hoped.

But nevel just asked, "would you please take me to the philharmocic hall for my orchestral practise? I am already late!"

I nodded sadly. "But of course, jump in!"

Nevel grinned and slipped into my car, again without thinking about my birthday.

Sighing deeply, I started the car, ready to take my cousin to his destination.

Nevel kept on talking about spome concert where he would possibly perform as a pianist, but only in the case that the regular number one was still sick.

Here we were, and Nevel asked me to carry his folder with the score sheets. "And would ou please be kind enough to give me sheet number seven? But only after I have changed into my suit."

Yeah, of course I was kind enough, although this was very, very, sad. I followed him unto his cabins, and then I walked ahead to the performance room. As commanded, I opened Nevel's folder in order to hand him readily his requested score sheet.

But hey, what was that? The folder contained a colourful enevelope with fluorescent letters,reading "For the world's best cousin for the eighteenth birthday!"

Suddenly, not only Nevel showed up, rigged and ready for the concert practice, but also Leanne carter and other members of the school orchestra.

Hey, even Quinn Pensky was here, complete with her trombone,[3:5] rigged and ready to blow something. She was accompanied by Zoey Brooks, rigged and ready to sing something. Their headmaster Dean Rivers had recently been hit by some model plane and was still out of business, so there was a substitute who had allowed them to go to Seattle for half a week. Quinn wanted to see Otis again, and as this happened to be this week, Nevel had been able to talk her into a little performance.

I had Quinn with that instrument practising on the campus of Pacific Coast Academy, but I had not known that she was actaully able to play it. Well, she was vastly inferior to Nevel's performance of the piano.

* * *

Aw, Mindy's a jolly good fellow  
Mindy's a jolly good fellow  
Mindy's a jolly good Fellow  
Which nobody can deny  
Aw. Mindy's a jolly good fellow  
Which nobody can deny!

* * *

Even aunt Penelope had been trying to sing along, but she was not able to hold a candle to the experts.

When this standard birthday song was about to expire, Nevel announced playing a piece that would only be played once in history, and this moment in time was today, a sonata he had composed just for my eighteenth birthday.

The hall went completely silent.

I listened dreamily to my cousin's wonderful solo performance which made other onlookers melt for awe.

And then there was a birthday cake, unfortunately not an edible one, but I preferred aunt Penelope's brownies any day over fat and creamy cakes, and there were enough of those dry but tasty cookies.

More precisely, the cake had been made by Quinn's and Zoey's class mate Stacey Dillsen, a girl from swampscott in Massachusetts. She spoke with a penetrant lisp, but was fairly nice — or so she seemed. The material used for the caker were cotton swabs and carpenter's glue.

But at least the candles were authentic, and there were eighteen of them which I was now supposed to blow into oblivion.

Stacey squealed fanatically, and this was getting a little bit on my nerves, but not enough to spoil the evening.

I closed my eyes in order to take breath and to blow the candles, thinking about winning the science fair as my biggest wish for the next year.

The candles flickered and got extinguished, just like candles in the wind … oops!

Oh, the envelope also contained a coupon for a used car at Otto's.[3:6] It would be an old car, but at least it would be mine.

* * *

**3.6 My Sick Aunt**

Aunt Penelope had got some slight kidney insufficience for several years. But in spite of having consulted several medics, this had not been diagnosed until now. Doctors were so … welll … stupid?

I remembered Doctor Glazer[3:7] from my home in San Diego, a creep who used to charge high sums for trivial diagnostics, and an extra sum for keeping his mouth shut about medical secrets of his patients. Unfortunately, Glazer was the uncle of Zoey and Dustin, and his nephiew and niece were often enough embarrassed by this not so flattering fact.

Not many weeks ago, Doctor Trestin[3:8] had examined her once more, but he had just been able to prescib some medicine that did not work at all, and that was not even registered as a legal medication in almost all states.

Quinn Pensky seemed to be also some sort of an aspiring medic, and, inspite of lacking proper equipment, she had taken a closer look at my aunt's uncomfortable back, figuring that there was a problem with her kidneys. Surprisingly, she suggeted my aunt to consult Doctor Lange, the aforementioned teacher for biology and veterinary surgeon responsible for her alpaca Otis, because of those problems.

Unlike her colleagues specialised on human anatomy and pathology, Doctor Lange actually found out the truth of aunt Penelope's tribulations. It was a sort of kidney failure only known to be caused by eating some rare sort of chili pods form South America.[3:9]

Peruvian alpacas, such as Quinn's Otis are the only mammals resistent to the poison of those hot pods. And that is the reason why they have survived in the wilderness of the southern american cordillera where those chili pods grow naturally.

This connection is the reason why Quinn knew so much about that kind of kidney failure.

Officially, Peruvian power pepper was illegal in the state of Washington, and in California as well. But, unfortunately, they got often confused with other representants of the genus capscicum of the family of solanaceæ.

In the case of aunt Penelope, the disease was not yet in a critical state, so it would have been possible with a lot of rest and appropriate treatment to stop the pernicious condition. In other words, she would have to go to a spa for quite a few months, if not longer. But was this even a considerable possibility? Who would care for Nevel whenever she was at a spa? It was to be hoped that it was would not be his perversely gaga grandmother.[3:10]

* * *

**3.7 Swab Arts**

A few weeks ago I had complained about the lame manners of teaching art, as practised by Cream Fielder.

Stacey Dillsen and her cotton swab arts had demonstrated a perfect example of creative arts, though, using cotton swabs of all colours and carpenter's glue.

And this lead me to some very obnoxious idea.

Should I really have dared to think it?

OK … there it was … Stacey Dillsen sounded like the perfect punishment for Drake and Josh.

Josh Nichols who was still hankering after the same sort of girls as his worthless step brother Drake. Likewise, Stacey was an even worse fangirl of Drake Parker than Zoey Brooks had ever been, even before she had come to know that the teenage rock idol was nothing but a goo brained coxcomb switching girls faster than his undergarments.

I already imagined the creepy boys trapped in a cage made of cotton swabs and Grizzly glue,[3:11] the swabs being of a diversity of colours, from black to white, from red to green, from yellow to blue, and on and on and on it went … And then they would scream and whimper in agony while being forced to listen to Stacey's lispy talk in which she rhapsodises all over Drake.

Of course this plan was not really easy to be executed, as there needed to be some trick in order to allow for Stacey to get anywhere near to Drake and his manager, something like a fan convent. Those had been becoming really popular.

I was still helping Nevel to set up his web site, _Nevelocity_, so maybe this would be the perfect medium for spreading the news about such an event , on a page using a whole bunch of colours?

But this would not warrant the presence of Stacey.

* * *

**3.8 College Picks**

This was my second to last term at this illustrious boarding school in the outskirts of the emerald city, and it was high time for college picks.

Of course there was a huge amount of schools for the future elite concerning the research in physics, biology, or chemistry, and I had already started sending aopplications to all of them, such as the Californian Institute Of Technology, commonly abbreviated as Caltech, located in Pasadena near Los Angeles, or the fantabulous Massachusetts Institute For Technology in Cambridge in … well … Massachusetts. Other potential choices included Yale, Stanford, Princeton, Harvard, Cornell, Columbia, and Berkeley.

Having been expelled from Belleview was of course quite some obstacle, and so I had definitely needed the homnour roll here at Priorwood Prep in order to make it to any decent college. Better would have been the victory in the national science fair, but the finals were still pending and would only have an influence on a scholarship, which, of course, was an important point as well, as my parents were pretty much upset because I have not been visiting them during the last months, and they would not pay for the supreme scientific education I wanted to have. Rather, they still would have preferred me to continue in their fishy business instead of running for the Nobel Prizes.

But all the high level universities were located either in California or in the north eastern states, and thus pretty far away from Seattle.

And this would make it impossible for me, with or without a scholarship, to stay here at the home of aunt Penelope in order to take care of Nevel and to allow her thusly to go often enough to a spa in order to recover from her kidney disease.

This, of course, would be a very important decision. I knew that Nevel needed me, but, on the other hand, he did not want me to give up on the best possible education just for him. He would have been proud of me if I had ever made it through one of the top schools of the country.

Time was runniung out, and the guidance counsellour of Priorwood Preparatory School had been a bit consternated when listening to my concerns. It would have been the first time in his career that a student had made such a decision because of a little cousin. Needy closer relatives had been often a major motivation, though.

But of course the state of Washington was not totally devoid of fairly high level eductaion in the sector of physics, biology, and chemistry, although none was able to hold a candle to the big players in California and in the northeastern states. And the most suitable of all appeared to be Seattech, as ewhich was located, as the name suggested, in Settle, well, a bit outside for that matter.

I had not yet made my choice, but I was going to consider it seriously.

* * *

**3.9 National Science Fair**

Finally, the time of the nationals had come.

This year, the main sponsor of the science fair was from New York City, and thus the city of the Broadway had been chosen to host this most prestigious competition.

I was representing all alone the state of Washington, as nobody had been able here to hold the dimmest candle up to me. And I was convinced that, if I was able to even make it up to here, I would be able to make it just anywhere.[3:12]

The most ridiculous case had been one Fredward Benson who had thought to impress anyone with his web cam. It was suited for pulling off a ridiculous web show, but it held no significant scientific value.

My invention for the nationals was an improvenment of the apparatus I had been working on a few months ago, the machine that had caused Sweeney to loose his believe in understanding science.

At the same time, it was also an improvement of a hyperbolic photon cannon[3:13], a device I had originally invented in order to trump Quinn Pensky's warrior robot with a built in phaser lancer.

Don't get me wrong, I was still up to showing that I was the bigger genius, but for Nevel's sake, I had made up with Quinn and was not hell bent on destroying her robots anymore.

A photon was usually explained as a particle or quantum of light, or as a carrier of electromagnetic forces.

There had been a long history of the discussion as of whether light was a wave or a stream of particles, and both have got a point. Eighty years earlier, Compton's conquest of the Nobel Prize had set the mile stone from whence the notation of the photon had been generally accepted.

OK, enough of that for now, as we have already seen that not even our teacher for physics had been able to follow my explanations with ease, although he had finally come to see the gist of it, but he would never have been able to advancethe theory behind it on his own, or to make significant contributions to its technological applications.

So, who were my foes in this contest?

One of them was Kirby Bancroft Chadworthy from Tulsa in the state of Oklahoma. Already pronouncing the name caused me headaches. He seemed to be the only competitor from a more rural region.

Oh no, there was also a team from Minnesota, consisting of Logan Mitchell and of Shane Diamond.[3:14]

Finally, there were Mary Ferry and Duane Ogilvy from Rocky Road in Upstate New York. They looked most dangerously like the typical nerds. Their invention also seemed to be connected to the topic of light. But while I was concerned with high energy technology, they seemed to be interested in using light for data transfer and telecommunication. I am going to come back to them later on, as they were important for some little side mission of mine while being here in the northeastern regions.

But now there was the big favourite, for, just as each year, the number one of California had already cut his way through the toughest competion. This year, it was aforementioned Simon Nelson Cooke from Santa Clarita.

Unlike the rest of us, Simon did not carry any invention of considerable size into the hall. Quite the contrary, Cookie himself was the invention to be exhibited. In other words, he was a cyborg, chock full with biomechatronical and bioelectronic features.

The coordination of his built-in biomechatronic gadgets was up to his self invented light fibre carrier technology.

So, who of us was about to make the race to the national award?

* * *

**3.10 A Split Family**

And now it is time to talk about my little side mission I had to go through.

Mary Ferry and Duane Ogilvy were students at Rocky Road, and class pals of a certain Zachariah Carter Schwartz.

The latter's partial family name coincided not by pure accident with that of Priorwood student and multiple beauty queen Leanne Carter. More precisely, they were step siblings.

I did not know the details, but the divorce of Leanne's parents must have been really dirty, and it had occurred when she was very young.

But the flaming hatred between her parents had never since cooled down.

Leanne had been taught to hate her mother's family, and there was probably no less hostility on the other side. But there was one person over there whom she was by absolutely no means able to hate … quite the contrary. And this exception was her step brother Zachariah Carter Schwartz whom she had not been able to meet a lot, only once by accident, but that had been enough. The main reason was that he had shared her ecopacisfist concerns almost completely.

But, on the other hand, Zach was not aware of this, and the trench war between the sides of the dysfunctional family would have made it a real pain.

My mission was that of a messenger trying to find out about Zach's current situation, and, in the best case, make him aware of her feelings for him. She had even provided me with a letter for him.

Zach was here in order to cheer for his class pals Mary and Duane, along with many of his class pals.

I was not hard for me to find the fanclub of the two genius kids from Rocky Road, presided by principal Brandywine. The latter was sitting in some sort of whell chair, but not because she was in any way handicapped, but she was just plain lazy, the most inert of them all. I had not got any fan club on my side, though, as the distance from Seattle to New York was a bit too long for a class trip.

I shook hands with Eliah Pataki,[3:15] the president of the student council of Rocky Road. One of their students was a certain Adelaide Singer who was not quite unfamiliar to me.[3:16], but I will come back to this topic later on. In any case, I passed unrto Eliah the note from Leanne that was destined for Zachariah Carter Schwartz. Of course I was supposed to wait for an answer and to return with it to Leanne. But I wagered that the message was not without a certain emotional impact, and that Zach would be too much consternated to answer on site. But I had still got a bit time left, at least until the decision of the judges.

* * *

**3.11 Forevermore The Winner**

There were two head judges responsible for decising on the result of this year's national science fair, and both of them were from New York City.

One of them was Mr. Jamerson[3:17] from some district school in Manhattan. He was well known as an inventor on his own right, and thus a whole lot more qualified than one of those teacher with no sense for research and scientific progress. He was well known for improving gadgets, making them work better by a factor of seven hundred, provoded that they did not blow up prematurely.

The second judge was named Doctor Douglas Filmore Bradford.[3:18] He was performing some research as well, probably in the biological department. Maybe I should have appeared here with my research on genertic manipulation, as this would have been more of his thing, and certainly have impressed him a whole lot more than with my univeral power converter.

Alas, worrking with high energy was so infinitely much more fun and pleasure than watching genetically manipulated mold grow.

Then it was the right moment for the judges to announce their decision.

This made my heartbeat accelerate dramatically, and I already feared my heart to blow up like a bar of dynamite.

Douglas Filmore Bradford thanked all of us participants for our presentations and all the efforts we had certainly put into our research and experiments. "Unfortunately, there may only be one winner, though. And it is a pleasure for me to announce the same. While aself-programmed cyborg is certainly a sensational mile stone in modern technology, and while super high speed data transfers in fibre wires are very useful, only one of you had achieved some significant progress both in theory and applied technology, and thus the winner is … Miss Melinda Cranshaw!"

I gasped and choked. Of course it was both a pleasure and an honour for me to receive this award, but I could not avoid breaking into tears of joy. I was not even able to give the expected speach of the winner.

Cookie was disappointed for his second prize, but a cyborg should stand above human shortcomins such as feelings, should he?

Time was now close to having leave New York City again.

* * *

**3.12 Leanne's Crush**

Unfortunately, I had not been able to reach Zachariah Carter Schwartz again before my departure from the city of the free, as I used to call New York City. At least he had got Leanna's number, just in case …

Waiting in the airport restaurant, I was reached by aforementioned Adelaide Singer.

Addie had already been a few times in San Diego in order to visit some relatives, and there she had become a good friend of Megan Parker, the little sister of Drake and thus step sister of Joshuah Nichols. They had already made a few fun videos together.

But now she was not here in order to talk about Megan, whom I had not seen in two years, but about her friend Zachariah, who had been shocked by the message from Leanne.

* * *

Last year, Zach had that dirty affair with my best friend Geena Fabiano.

That concubinacy went tortally awry and really hurt him, and he is still very angry at her.

I had so seen it coming, the two of them were too different to be meant to be together, it sucked completely. But they refused to listen to me.

It will take some time for me to recover.

* * *

I remarked that Leanne was very patient, and that she would not hurt him.

Of course they would have to go straight against their families, who would impossibly react in no other way than angrily, but who cared? I had come to know that most families are just hypocritical packs worse than the beasts, so bear with it.

Addie nodded solemnly, and she told me that she would watch her friend's mood and suggest him to give it a consideration.

I sighed for relief when I picked my belongings, as my flight to Seattle was already announced by the loudspeakers.

But Addie also told me something very interesting about her friend Geena. "You are from Seattle, right? Then you might encounter Geena's alike-looking cousin Lucilla Stone.[3:19] a girl that tries hard to become a real rock star.

I shuddered for disgust, because I hated rock stars like Drake Parker and was totally angry at them, male or female made no difference.

But now it was time to say good-by to New York City.

* * *

**3.13 The Flight Back**

I had been assigned a really crappy seat in the plane, and I had to pass some mid aged man in some designer suit.

He tackled me carelessly, making me drop my handbag. "Oops, sorry!" He gave me a business card. "I may make you a sculpture to make up for the inconvenience."

I took a look at the card, reading the name Harold Joyner,[3:20] and I had to think unto myself, "wait … Harry Joiner? The pop artist?" I started stammering, "Jo … Jo … Jo …"

Then he completed, "Joiner … but call me Harry. I have just got this suit tailored by Amanda Cantwell from Mad Style in New York City."

I panted heavily. "You are a very creative and passionate artist, right? Not one of those pedantic lamers like … oops … that would not be polite to the mass of uour colleagues"

He grinned and adapted to some stout posture. "The greatest!"

I asked carefully, "art classes at my school, Priorwood Prep in Seattle, are so lame. May you have a look at them and convince the teachers to …"

Harry Joiner nodded solemnly. "I have to do in Seattle in order to sig the contracts for an exposition, and I may cerrtainly check out your school!"

For me, the changes would have been too late, but Nevel had still git a few more years to go, and it was better for him to have decent classes, even in art.

And Joiner was certainly able to inspire Miss Fielder into a teaching style encouragiung artist passion and creativity.

* * *

**3.14 Guardianship**

One of my first duties after returning from Seattle was that of accepting the task of a partial guardian for my cousin Nevel, starting with the next autumn, allowing aunt Penelope to go on vacations and enroll at a spa in order to recover from the results of a Peruvian chilli poisoning.

And this was a task triggering many other duties.

Granted, finally knowing how to drive the stick switched var I had been gifted at my recent eighteenth birthday would have helped me a lot with the dutiful accomplishment of my daily tasks, not only but especially as a guardian of Nevel Papperman.

I also had to enroll at Seattech, with the recommendation written by no other than Douglas Filmore Bradford from New York City. According to his statement, it was the best recommendation that he had ever written for anyone.

Of course it would have sufficed for a much better college, which had made my decision in favour of staying in Seattle in order to serve as my cousin's guardian much more weighty, and I just had to hope that Nevel would acknowledge during the foillowing years what I was doing for him.

* * *

**3.15 Senior Prom**

During my visit at New York City, I had been sort of a messenger in order to report Leanne Carter's cause of love.

But doing so, I had completely forgotten to even think about a partner for my own prom.

Strangely, many creeps that had never showed any interest in science and theory were now trying to flatter me. But this would not let them get anywhere, for I hated hypocritical bastards.

In other words, I preferred to go all alone to my senior prom.

Nevertheless, the prom celebrations also contained a party honouring my victory at the national science fair.

Sweeney claimed to be the most successful science teacher in the history of our nation, as he had taught both the winner and a runner up of the same national science fair, a total novelty in the history of science fairs.

Of course, he had hardly been of any help for me, and I doubt that he had been much of a help for Simon nelson Cooke, either.

Anyways, Nevel had gathered a few voices and instruments, and he sat behind the school's piano, rigged and ready to play the most triumphal tune in the hostory of mankind, taken from Giuseppe Verdi's greastest of all operas, _Aida_.

Especially Leanne's saxophone made the campus vibrate when I entered the court, striding most solemnly.

* * *

Gloria a Sweeney  
Che il laboratorio protegge  
Al dean che il campo regge  
Inni festosi alziam  
Gloria a Mindy.

S'intrecci il loto al lauro  
Sul crin dei vincitori  
Nembo gentil dei fiori  
Stenda sulle arme un velo.[3:21]

* * *

Acconmpanied by Philip Brownley and Ashley Gonzalez, I kept on walking, waving around. Never before had anyone coming alone to the prom ball been in the centre of so much attention.

Belinda Peeloff had been totally surprised by these special celebrations, and she had arrived in a totally shabby outfit, but I did not even care.

* * *

Vieni o Mindy vindice,  
vieni a gioir con no!  
Sul passo della Mindy,  
I lauri, i fior versiamo![3:22]

* * *

I was also chosen as the valedictorian of this years's seniors, and I had to give some sort of a speech, although I hated this kind of obligation.

* * *

**3.16 The Runners Up**

So, I had been victorious at the national science fair, but I pitied those in the second place, such as Simon Nelson Cook, Mary Ferry and Duane Ogilvy, Kirby Bancroft Chadworthy, or Logan Mitchell and Shane Diamond.

But at least they were not going to lose everything, for having it made into the national finals was already to be considered as some huge honour.

And maybe I would work together with them one day, maybe even on some project worthy of the Nobel Prize.

But nothing would change the fact that I still considered myself as the biggest genius around, even though I was now not bound for an absolute top college, but one of the league of second choices.

This national science fair had just been the start, and my time to rule above all with my supreme intelligence was still to come, proving that my genius, and not any school, was making the world truly shine.

* * *

**Chapter 4 Seattech — Freshman Year**

* * *

**4.1 Theory And Practice**

I was already looking forword to the first term at Seattech, but during the sunner break, there were still a few things left to do during the summer break.

Indeed, one of the most urgent points was that of learning a stick switched car, as I would need to be able to ride this car, the first one of my own, as Nevel's guardian.

I would have tp take him to Priorwood, make it to my college, then pick him up from there and return together to our apartment.

Now, I had already studied the mechanixcs and electronics of cars at the age of seven. I had been able to disassemble the car of perversely evil teacher Linda Hayfer in San Diego, which had ultimately got me expelled from San Diego Belleview, only two years and a half ago, and to reassemble it in our classroom, everything withing measly four hours, and it had worked perfectly. In theory, I should have known everything to operate a stick switched car like the one gifted by my aunt and my friends upon my eighteenth birthday.

But, in theiry, there is no difference between theory and practice, whereas in practice there is. And thus some German poet named Johann Wolfgang von Goethe had said in his master piece _Faust_: "All theory is grey, but the golden tree of actual life springs ever green."

I had always hated that kind of poetry, but, unfortunately, now I was forced to spot a grain of truth in it.

Of course that old German creep had not known about what was nowadays known as a grey system theory, videlicet a concept for the analysis of more or less imperfect informations, a situation which was unfortunately fairly common in reality, aand I had often enough made bad experiences with this.

I did not want to embarrass myself in front of Nevel, and thus it was absolutely necessary for me to practice in the secret.

So I took my car to some barely visited spot outsie the city of Seattle in order to try to get the hang out of it, but it was not really bound for success.

After ten minutes, my new old car was stuck in the midst of varies kinds of green shrubbery, more chaoyic than the one growing on the head of Chase Bartholomew Matthews, aforementioned suitor of blond Mary Sue Zoey Brooks. This all but confirmed the old German tooter.

* * *

**4.2 Zen Of Operating A Stick Switch**

Stuck in the bushes … that was my current situation.

But I do not know whether I was really awake, or just dreaming or hallucinating instead, when ab elderly guy of Japanese ethnicity appeared in front o me. He introduced himself as Mr. Takato[4:1], and he wondered about my current outfit.

Of course I was covered with all sorts of twigs and leaves, some of them being even a bit thorny. I wondered what the uncanny person was up to. "I have tried to ride this stick switched car, and the result was .. not so satisfactory."

Takato explaine dthat he was a member of the Fukanaga Dynasty of ninjas.

I had heard quite a few scary things about those Japanese equivalent of the Arabian assassins, and this made me feel uncanny.

Takato was up to teaching me in the old ninja zen tradition of riding a stick switched car.

I deemed this impossible with my vehicle stuck in the shrubs, but the old tooter grinned and laughed about my plans. "You can't learn to ride your car until you have learned to learn to ride it, and for this avail, you must have attained your inner peace of mind."

I was a bit baffled by his statement. But I decided to give it a try, inspite of a thorough lack of understanding what he was talking about. Then I was going to empty my mind, for otherwise it would not have been possible — or so Takato said — to fill it with inner peace. Then I was forced to perform certain stupid task. Fortunately my mind had already been too empty to ask "why the _censored_ do I have to do this?"

I don't know how much later, but I finally woke up, or recovered from my hallucination, sitting in my old new car and driving it painlessly back to town. It was obvious that it was better for me to refrain from telling anyone how I had learned to ride that car, though.

* * *

**4.3 Guardian**

Aunt Penelope had left the building and was now bound for a spa retreat in Yakima Valley. According to Doctor Lange, the good air of Yakima would help her to overcome a lot faster the consequences of the Peruvian chili poisoning.

In the case that this should fail, Quinn would have to inject her some DNA from her alpaca Otis which would make her mostly immune to the unhealthy stuff founfd in that nightshade plant. But it was necessary to rule out the possibility of an allergy against Otis, for otherwise she'd contract some even worse disease.

So I was now finally Nevel's guardian and responsible for him. "So, as long as I have to care for you, there are certain rules …"

My cousin glared aghst at me.

Well, now I was supposed to mention some orders and prohibitions, but I was not able to think of any. "Rules? What rules? Bear with it!" I sighed deeply.

Only after thinking for ten miniutes, I dared to give a comman, "no girlfriends in your room after ten o'clock in the evening."

Nevel had not even had another crush since his onesided thing with Zoey Brooks, and he would certainly not do any unruly stuff. Nut that was the only thing I was able to think of. "May I have a pet? Quinn may get me some really weird ones."

Well, that had been so true. Inspite of pets being illegal at Pacific Coast Academy, Quinn had got a rat,[4:2] a bird spider,[4:3] and a king snake.[4:4] Then there was also Otis, but it was too big to hide on the campus, which had already caused aforementioned troubles. Quinn had also got an ostrich in her stables.[4:5]

Of course, nevel would have easily found a way to hide animals of that size somewhere in his room, or elsewhere in our apartment, and thus disalowing it would not have made any sense, so my answer was, "but not an elephant that makes too much noise and giant crap heaps."

Nevel grinned. "I will have to think about it."

I shrugged carelessly, With or without rules, it should not be too hard for me to get along with someone like Nevel, right?

As aforementioned, Seattech, although highly rated within the state of Washington, was by no means comparable to its remote cousins in Massachusetts and in California.

For that reason I was feeling bored.

The teachers must have thought us dumber than Drake Parker, or why else did they explain everything in such an annoyingly lengthy manner? Even my twleve years old cousin Nevel knew much more than the teachers were apparently exprecting from us eighteen years kid.

Of course it was not possible for me to go around the whole continent, especially now that I had to take care of Nevel. But maybe a few presentations along the west coast were in order.

* * *

**4.4 Natasha Misa**

As I have already mentioned, Nevel had hit a few times on much older girls, especially Zoey Brooks and Leanne Carter.

But during the following days, he had got the impression that some high school lass was hitting on him, and a really hot one at that, too.

The young woman in question was a certain Natasha Misa,[4:6] cheerleader of downtown Seattle's district school Ridgeway.

But what did Nevel have to do with those downtown kids? Being careful was not going to hurt anyone.

Basically nothing, except that he was occasionally the equipment manager of his school's athletic teams, and as such coming with the teams to their matches against those of other teams in King County, including said Ridgeway school.

Now it was still not an extremely common practice of cheerleaders to hit on much younger equipment managers of adversary teams, so there had to be something moe to it.

In this case, our basketball team, guided by captain Philip Brownley, had beaten the living hell out of that of Ridgeway, and there had been a common celebration in Groovy Smoothie, a juice pub near the location of Ridgeway School and apparently most common meeting point of those downtown kids outside their class times.

Nevel had been with Philip and Ashley Gonzalez in order to have an apple smoothie when Natasha had walked right up to his table and asked him for a date.

And now my younger cousin was pretty much confused, as this had never happened to him.

I was absolutely sure that the cheerio girl must have had some pernicious intentions, such as abusing Nevel for something.

Natasha was now heere in our apartment, and I did not walk away too far from them, but stay in the kitchen.

From their conversation, it became pretty much obvious that Natasha was interested in Nevel's web site, _Nevelocity_, the third greatest amateur web site of the state of Washington. It was nowadays a centre of informations about the interweb. According to Natasha, everythiong cool on the web needs to get recommendation from his site.

Nevel explained the technology he had deployed in order to fetch and represent the informations, such as data bases, ecmascript, xml, xslt, css, and many more.

Apparently, Natasha did not know much about the web. Well, she was so obviously a cheerio kind of girl and not a nerd like Nevel, so she was supposed to be dumb. Her main ambition was that of becoming a supermodel.

I shuddered with disgust, becuase that sort of girl was definitely not supposed to be in Nevel's league. And there was no reason for her to like an uncomely nerd such as my little brother. Either she was sent forth as a spy, or she needed Nevel somehow for her own publicity. I placed my stakes on the latter, as _Nevelocity_ had got many viewers, and Natasha's wall sized picture would adorn Nevel's home page, maybe even an animated video.

I was not sure how Nevel would take it, should I tell him about my guess.

Natasha was finally gone, and I asked nevel about their situation.

Nevel grinned. "She wants me to make a video clip of her in her new mini bikinis and put it onto _Nevelocity_."

This remark was about as complete a confirmation of my terrifying hunch as can be.

I had to tell Nevel about this. "Those spoilt lasses may think nerds can be easily abused, but they are so wrong!"

Nevel, with severely hurt feelings, sighed deeply and admitted that he should have seen that coming. He thanked me for the warning, although it would certainly impplu that Natasha would thenceforth at least refrain from making positive remarks about _Nevelocity_, making it a loose a lot of its popularity.

* * *

**4.5 Presentation At PCA**

As aforementioned, I had not got the time to travel too much, but I took a few free days in order to make yet another trip to Pacific Coast Academy, accompanied by Nevel.

Over a year had gone by since my last visit, and I had asked myself a whole bunch of questions concerning life over there during the last months.

Dean Rivers greeted me, and he was sad that I had not come to Pacific Coast Academy. The school would have needed that boost in order to justify their high expenses for the laboratory equipment.

Of course I knew these connections, as they were all too much familiar from my own school. During my first year, there had been no decent devices or teachers for science. But once I had claimed a patent for my invention of a power magnet, the sponsors and the board had been ready to hire a somewhat decent teacher for physics and chemistry, Mr. Sweeney.

I was also supposed to attend a class in physics of the juniors in here, taught by one Bert Beringer.[4:7]

Zoey was guiding me across the campus, and she had to answer a lot of questions asked by Nevel about her relationship with Chase Bartholomew Matthews.

Unfortunately, it had not gone the way we had supposed it to go since the discovery of Chase's otherwise lost message on her cellular phone. Zoey had rebuked Chhase severely for not having told her in person, although they had been close enough for almost two years. In addition, she was not pleased by her room mates' attitude. They had all the time encouraged Chase to stay silent about his crush, making bets concerning the question how long it would take me to figure.

The worst thing is that Chase had not given up and tried to make Zoey jealous by hiring a loose girl and mediocre actress named Trinidad Vega[4:8] as a fake girlfriend for himself

I hoped that this was a lesson for Nevel that he would not forget. He had amore than once asked me questions how to approach a girl, since the days of his crush on Leanne, but he had never found the courage to do the first step.

OK, so now I was attending Beringer's classes, and those were worse than anything I had seen in the state of Washington.

Beringer was as incompetent as can be. And Pacific Coast Academy boasted with having the best teachers of the whole state of California. Well, as a matter of fact, Sweeney had been a whole lot better than Beringer, and he was not the top of the charts, as opposed to Douglas Filmore Bradford amd Mr. Jamerson.

Aq question that had been following me around since my days in New Tork City whether Douglas Filmore was related to Mr. Bradford, the founder of Pacific Coast Academy.[4:9] In this case, thesubsequent question would have been the one for the reasons why Douglas Filmore, the best teacher for biology in the world, was not emplyed as a teacher at a school owned by his own family and with a claim of employing the best teachers of the country.

Other teachers for science here were no better, especially Cynthia Bromwell who was more worried about the bushy hair of Chase Matthews than about advance molecular chemistry.[4:10]

I was glad when the classes were over. They had been talking about the orbits of sattelites, following the laws of Johannes Kepler, but completely disregarding the results of the general theory of relativity of Albert Einstein. I should have asked more questions about this, but I saved my nerves for my impending presentation. Before that, I had to help Quinn with an invention of her own, and anti gravity chamber. Her was a bit bugged, so I helped her to fix it. This should have taught Nevel that I was still the bigger genius. But I had not got a reason to hurt Quinn, and so I remarked that I was older by two years, and this little additional experience had made the difference.

The demonstration of my invention, powerful enough to supply the school with energy for the next two years, was not much of a problem, down to the support I had received from my busy assistant Nevel.

Jeremiah Trottman, the insanely curious reporter of the school's own TV station, wanted to ask me a lot of stupid questions, but I ordered the security team to reamove him from the machine, as his presence was a big security risk.

So, the demonstration had worked like a charm.

Before leaving, Dean Rivers asked me the question about my general impression about the school.

I suspired deeply, and I told him about the utter incompetence of the teachers for science here at Pacific Coast Academy. "You should be ashamed for this. It does not match with your claims!" I had been brutally honest.

Quinn admitted that she had not got a better thing to say about teachers like Bromwell and Beringer, but Dean Rivers had never allowed her to talk.

I also mentioned Douglas Filmore Bradford as an example to live up to for all science teachers.

Dean Rivers choked and coughed, but there was no explanation from him.

So I was going to leave the campus of Pacific Coast Academy with a whole bunch of additional questions.

* * *

**4.6 Carly Shay**

Not many days had ever since passed by us.

Some kids from his school had recently become fans of a web show made by a girl from Seattle, a certain Carly Shay, and they had asked Nevel to write a review about it and publish it on _Nevelocity_.

And for that avail, we had watching one of their web sessions.

I had been shocked to no end when seeing Carly Shay on the screen, as she looked almost exactly like aforementioned Megan Parker, the person who had got me expelled. Was that an accident? I had to find out.

Carly was not alone in her web show. The other kids were Samantha Puckett and Fredward Benson.

Samantha Puckett was a vulgar tomboy with absolutely no manners at all.

Fredward Benson, the technical pro of the show, was a horny creep hitting perversely on Carly.

Strangely, I remembered having seen someone with the looks of Fredward in San Diego, a certain Toplin Wheeler.[4:11] Was there a connection?

They had got a special guest, a teacher at Ridgeway named Francine Briggs, and they seemed not really happy about it. It musy have been sort of a homework for them. Briggs had been playing a tune on her bagpipes, annoying the kids to no end. But then they showed funny background pictures, without Briggs even noticing.

Briggs had got some of the disgusting manners of Linda Hayfer, so, why had I not been able to do something like that instead of something that got me expelled from San Diego Belleview?

Nevel played the bagpipe tune along on his recorder. "Maybe a piano backup would be great for a bagpipe solo?"

Anyways, Nevel had invited Carly for an interview in order to write about her web show for _Nevelocity_. He had got a plan, he wanted to kiss Carly and say one of his poems:

* * *

This was a kiss on your cheek  
Yet another kiss I seek.

* * *

I gasped. "Nevel! You won't do that, will you?"

He went pale. "Er … maybe?"

I glared sternly at him. "You need to be more tricky in order to get Carly."

Nevel sighed deeply.

And now she was here, accompanied by her adult brother Spencer, who looked a lot like someone familiar to me from San Diego, a certain "Crazy" Steve, an employee of San Diego's most popular cinema, Première.

Nevel told me toleave him alone for the interview with Carly, so I walked with Spencer into the kitchen.

* * *

**4.7 Socko**

The walls were thin enough to hear any converastion between Carly and Nevel, but I concentrated on finding out about the similarities with Megan and "Crazy" Steve.

Spencer sighed. "It is true. Carly and Drake are Carly's cousins from San Diego. Steve is my monozygotic twin brother. But he had been in rehab since even before Carly's birth, and so she does not even know about him."

I choked.

Carly's mother was not the same as Spencer's. Their father was a submarine xcommander, travelling the world and the seven seas, and that's why Carly was cared for by him.

His outfit was pretty weird, a typical designer crap, inclusing a pair of yellow socks with stripes in various other colours. The foot covers were even illuminated.

"Those socks have been knitted by Joshuah Nichols,[4:12] a step brother of Carly and Drake. He is my best pal. I have found a cool nick name for him: Socko!"

I gasped.

Spencer wanted to know, "is anything wrong with that name?"

I shook my head. "Not with the name, but with Josh …" I panted heavily before admitting to having had a crush on the sock knitter. I disd not know exactly how, but I thought strongly about using Spencer in some way in order to get back at Josh, showing how much of a fool he had been, ignoring my feelings for him for the sake of hanging out with and trying to turn into a dirt cheap copy of his step brother Drake.

Spencer also remarkd that he was a law school dropout. "But I have been there for three days! And at high school, I had been a auxiliary judge at the honour council."

I sighed, because with such an auxiliary judge, I would not have been expelled from Belleview in the first place.

Now we returned to the foyer of our apartment, where I spotted a very disappointed Nevel. Spencer and Carly were about to go.

I had to give them the recipe for our tapenade, and then they were finally gone.

Nevel sobbed. "She does not seem to like me. And she does not allow me to play the piano in her web show. That stinks so much." His tears ran freely, and I had to wrap one of my arms around his shoulders in order to calm him down. After sighing deeply, he declared not to give up that easily. Yeah, that was my little favourite cousin!

* * *

**4.8 World Record**

We were watching Carly's web show once more.

The kids were trying to beat the record for the world's longest web show, which was just a little but over twenty-four hours.

The attempt was overseen by an official member of the board of _Jonas Book Of Records_, a certain Marilyn Raymour.[4:13]

The kids had to be online all the time and to perform something in front of the camera.

Even Nevel could not deny that some of their skits had been totally fun. "But a lot of it is just perverse." He was alluding to some regular segment they had invented, a random dance.

I had to agree with my cousin. "Thye could do so much better, such as lettinhg you play the piano."

Nevel nodded solemnly.

I suggested, "maybe you will soon find another web show and then help it beat the record established by Fredward, Samantha, and Carly. That will teach them." I grinned sarcastically.

Nevel nodded timidly, but he started thereupon cackling with glee.

The wattempted record would almost have fasiled after almost twenty-four hours due to a power failure.

Spencer had presented a new sculpture made of many movable items arranged in a creative manner. So he was apparently a very fertile artist. I had heard that Joiner had actually convinced the board of Priorwood Prep into more creativity in art classes. And this one Spoencer Shay looked like the perfect art teacher.

The sculpture had got one problem: It wasted a lot of power, and this had been close to causing a power failure.

But I had helped him a few hours before the start of the web session to use a portable version of my well-awarded power converter in order to prevent unnecessary power failures of up to five minutes. And this had done the trick.

In addition, Spencer was about to establish another world record for his complext mobile sculpture, and that one was very impressive, and it should suffice largely for convincing the board of Priorwood Prep.

* * *

**4.9 New Career**

A few days later, Nevel had actually got the chance to run in a web show.

But this time, it was another older girl hitting on him, a certain Valerie.[4:14] We did not even get to know her surname, which was already as fishy as can be.

And it was so obvious that she was only up to getting back at Fredward Benson, her recent ex boyfriend, who had trashed her, because he was still hankering in the most decadent manner after Carly Shay.

Valerie had got no brain, and Nevel could have done infinitely better. For that reason, he refrained from accepting Valerie's stupid offer.

At the same time, Spencer Shay was struggling with different problems. He had been told by his idol, Harry Joiner, that his sculptures were not all that good, and this sucked so much.

As Joiner had been the one to convince the board of Priorwood to hire more creative art teachers, his judgment against Spencer would weigh a lot, and the prep school was unlikely to consider employing spencer, even with the huge recommendation of having built the biggest mobile sculpture in the world. And his other current works, such as a christmastree full of sniffing noses, an elephant bicycle, and a squirrel-shaped camera, were not to be forgotten, either.

Fortunately, Carly Shay appeared to be able to turn the mind of Joiner around, as he had obviously just envied Spencer for his huge talent.

But was this already the dawn of a career for Spencer Shay as a teacher for arty at a school like Priorwood Prep? Unfortunately, Carly seemed to prefer her brother as a freelancer, because of his more flexible working times which allowed her to be there for her whenever she needed it most.

A little later, Carly felt stalked by her biggest fan, a certain Amanda Valdez from Tacoma, a city not too far from Seattle. The tween girl had dared to show up in her show, as the first live audience, and she impressed with her duck dance.[4:15] She was harder to get rid of than chicken pox or other diseases of that sort.

Drake Parker had once got a slightly less obnoxioys fan named Wendy.[4:16] The two of them ganging up would have wreaked havoc upon anyone … just in case I would ever need something like that. No star would have wanted to be stalked by that duo at the dawn of his or her career.

* * *

**4.10 Five Years**

Now there was a special of Carly's web show for the fifth anniversary of the "friendship" between Carly and Samantha.[4:17]

If you asked me, Samantha was abusing Carly like a parasitic bug, and she just made her feel better for having helped a fallen girl.

This impression would occasionally be confirmed by Zoey Brook, who knew Samantha Puckett under a different name: Trisha Kirby.[4:18] The pernicious demon had seduced and abused Dustin Brooks in a really creepy manner, just two years ago. But this is a topic for later.

Indeed, mad disputes had been to be predicted.

Samantha had sold a shirt Carly had made for her upon that fifth anniversary in order to buy tickets for some poprock concert by a band similar to that of Drake Parker.

Getting rid of Sam would have been the best thing to happen to Carly Shay, but, unfortunayely, that horny creep known as Fredward Benson had prevented them from breaking up by bribing the viewers into telling them to make up again.

In other words, Nevel and I would have top work on this, and a bit harder than ever before.

* * *

**4.11 Boots Made For Walking**

Web shows had become more and more popular during the last years, and thence there was little wonder the bug business had started discovering them as a potential carrier for publicity.

This was also the case for Carly Shay's Show which was about to be discovered by California's biggest shoe vendor, Daka.[4:19]

A few months ago, Drake Parker had sung a promotional song for this vendor of footwear, due to a vastly unfavourable deal struck by his manager Joshuah Nichols and the record label Spin City. The latter had completely broken and distorted his song beyond recognition.

This should have served their cousin Carly as a warning, but Samantha must have manipulated Carly into becoming greedy and accept the deal.

So they were making publicity for some new shoes, highly technological footwear constructed by Quinn Pensky.

Unfortunately, my former top rival had been a bit absentminded since she had trashed her former boyfriend, a certain Mark del Figgalo, when working on these techfoots, and the technology was thoroughly broken. After this breakup, Quinn had started dating disgusting coxcomb Logan Reese, number two in this respect right after Drake Parker, similarly to Josh's and Drake's current perverted relationship.

I started to jump into the situation and repair the bugged technology. Otherwise, Carly would have possibly broken either the confidence of her viewers by promoting crap, or her contract with Daka by telling the truth about the techfoot.

Quinn's situation was very unpleasant. Her dreams of intellectual supremacy would be steadily broken by her concubinacy with a completely dumb creep.

Although she was my closest rival, I was better going to look for a way to save the neighbour girl and fellow geek princess from ongoing corruption and decadence.

But sooner or later, some other scandals surrounding Daka would be discovered. This is of course a topic for later.

* * *

**4.12 Carly On TV**

From being discovered as a medium for publicity, it was only a little step for Carly's web show to sniffing the air of the established mass media, especially television broadcasting corporations.

And, indeed, Morgan Eichman,[4:20] daughter of a producer of TV Seattle and headmaster of Hollywood School For The Professional performance Arts, was a fan of Carly's show, deeming it vastly superior to anything on TV, especially her dad's shows, and she persuaded him into giving Carly's web cast a chance, videlicet a TV show on their own.

Unfortunately, producer Brad Eichman appered to be able to lower the minimal level of the web show even further, turning it from dumb comedy into dumb with no strings attached. He based the show primarily on a dinosaur costume, something that made all viewers puke. Carly had to moderate the show side by side with Hollywood kid star Amber Tate,[4:21] a younger and female copy of Drake Parker.

This was beyond any doubt the darkest point in the life of Carly Shay. At the same moment, Fredward was abused for slave errands, while Samantha had been fired for beating up the dinosaur. This had made Carly particularly stinky, for she was unable to work on anything without her "friends".

Fortunately for Carly, Eichman gave up on his project after a few minutes in favour of a sitcom without Carly, but with Amber and the dinosaur.

I had to see that Carly would hardly ever go anywhere without Fredward and Samantha.

* * *

**4.13 Pirates Of The Carabas**

The cops here in Seattle were really dumber than allowed by the police. They were especially unable to tell the difference between pirated movies and movies about pirates. The vendor of Schneider's Conviniency Store, a shop near Bushwell Plaza, the residence of Carly and Spencer Shay, had been making parodies of known movoes about pirates, and the police here mistook them for illegal copies of the current top Hollywood movies.

In order to prove their screwed assumptions, they abused the attic of Carly's loft, making it impossible for the gang to continue making web shows.

For that reason, Carly and her friends had tried to figure what was going on, and they figured the proper nature of the pirate movies.

The cops were now gone, and thus the kids were once more able to broadcast the web show, this time presenting their home made pirate movie clips. They were sitting in a fake pink, wearing blindfolds, peg legs, and hooks.,

Nevel had got a few ideas for improving the intellectual level of the web show beyond that of dumb comedy by using it in order to teach the viewers about the history of navigation and its impact on the colonialisation of the American continent during the fuifteenth through eighteenth century, but this was impossible to make it into the web show as long as Carly was brainwashed by Fredward and Samantha. We would not give up on it that easily and work on it, though.

* * *

**4.14 Carly For Priorwood**

Carly Shay and her web show were very popular here at Priorwood Prep.

Philip Brownley had thus suggested to grant her a full time scholarship at this excellent school, which was certainly justified because she was on the honopur roll of Riodgeway.

And of course dumb wench Samantha Puckett and creepy Fredward benson would not get something like that.

This would for sure have been the best occasion to sunder the trio of the web show and to free Carly from bad influence.

Of course Carly was not easily going to give up on two people whom she considered — even erroneously — to be her two best friends. Not even the prospects of studying at a six star preparatory school, along with many other stars of the teenage population of Seattle were gointg to help her with that.

And Samantha and Fredward were most certainly perverse enough to sabotage the impending interview of Carly with Dean Linda Peeloff.

Spencer was unfortunately no help at all.

But … hey! There was someone able to help us:

The grandfather of Carly and Sam was a retired lawyer from Yakima. He had not always been content with Spencer'sloose manner. And he had got a deal with Spencer that he would have to return to law school, if he was not going to stand on his own feet by means of his chosen career as an artist withing three years. A steady job as a teacher for art at a renowned preparatory school was certainly something able to convince grandpa Shay of the possibility that something like that was possible. And a job of Spencer at that school would automatically increase Carly's chances to make the switch as well.

Indeed, upon having been informed about the offer Carly had received from priorwood, the old shark made his way straight to the office of Linda Peeloff, and he decided to accept the scholarship for his grandaughter. "This is one occasion in Carly's life she cannot miss out on, mo matter what her friends say. And for Spencer, there will hardly be any other chance on a steady income during the next years.

Thus the deal between gramps Shay and Linda Peeloff was struck on site, bypassing even an interview with Carly.

Nevel grinned gleefully.

For now, Carly did not even know that she and Nevel would soon be school mates , and maybe together the new couple of stars at Priorwood preparatory School …

* * *

**4.15 Blind Date At Dusk**

I had not had a date in ages, especially not even after giving up for good on Joshuah Nichols. I wished him to go rot elsewhere for having ignored my feelings because of clinging like a barnacle to his coxcomb of a step brother.

I had stumbled into a site named _Why Not Date Me Dot Com_ and started giving it a try, at least for the time being. After a few checks and questionaries, I was suggested a guy from Seattle of twenty-seven years. A blind date was set tonight at dusk in aforementioned Groovy Smoothie. In order to recognise each iother, we were each carrying a flower of a previously agreed sort that was rare in Seattle.

Entering the bar, I stumbled into Spencer who tackled me unintentionally to the ground. "I have got a date here in a few minutes, and now you have spoiled my blouse!"

Spencer squealed, and his butt started burning.

The waiter extinguished the fire with a smoothie.

ThenI recognised that he was carrying that rare flower, and vice versa.

So, Spencer and I had been matched as a blind date. This was hard to digest.

Spencer was still upset because I had talked his grandfather into sending Carly to Priorwood and forcing him to accept the job as a teacher.

I told him that he should thank me for that, and he would be grateful one day. "At least there is no longer aa reason for your grandpa to send ypu back to law school."

Of course Spencer was too stubborn to understand it.

We started disputing over this for quite a few minutes, but at thend, we pulled each other close, then our lips locked, and our tongues intertwined.

Oh my god!

* * *

**4.16 Fencing Bensons**

The next morning, I was still consternating. Nothing more than the lingering French kiss had been going on between us, but we would keep on dating.

But I knew next to nothing about Spencer and his past, and vice versa, well, maybe he had heard something from his pen friend Joshuah alias Socko, andthis would be shocking for him … my expulsion from Belleview and so on.

Fredward for example was still consternated because he had just found out that his ancestors, unto his mother, had been champions of the rapier, the "Fencing Bensons".[4:22]

And how was Nevel going to take my relationship with Spencer? He had already suffered in his recent past from being turned down by several girls, and he was not really a fan of Spencer Shay.

I was still very dizzy when I arrived at home and slumped onto my bed.

My past year at college was coming to an end, without anything interesting going on, but now I had slipped into something that was impossible to go out without a horrible bang.

* * *

**Chapter 5 Seattech — Sophomore Year**

* * *

**5.1 Remorses**

Summer break had begun at all schools and colleges in Seattle.

Of course Nevel had been all the way curious about my blind date, and it would have made no sense trying to lie to him. He was now getting his luggage together in order to visit Penelope in Yakima spa resort for a few days.

I could have tried to avoid talking about it, but Nevel's curiosity was too strong, and he wanted me to show him the father of my future kids. Needless to say, he was exaggerating, but hey, thirteen years old boys tend to do so. He urged me to take a pregnancy test each day, although he knew certainly that not even French kisses were able to achieve something like that. So I finally mentioned that my blind date had been no other than Spencer Shay.

Given that Nevel was by no means a big fan of the law school drop out, he reacted as calm as only possile in such a situation, He panted heavily. "OK, I just want you to be heavy."

I hugged my little cousin, "Thanks!"

He added with grim determination, "but if he refuses to marry you once you are pregnant, he will rue the day. He will so rue it, until the times of dystopia will he rue it!

I sighed deeply, as I had not remotely thought as far.

I also wondered what Carly would have done upon finding out that I was Spencer's date. Unlike Zoey Brooks and Leanne Carter, Carly had taken severe offense from Nevel's feelings for her, and even more from his attempts of improving the content of her web show. Needless to say, she had done so especially due to the impact from Samantha and Fredward, and this one was soon going to be reduced severely. But I still sensed that she would treat her brother's date as an act of betrayal.

And the situation was going to be worse for Joshuah Nichols, my former crush and long term pen pal of Spencer Shay. I assumed so strongly that he would feel backstabbed in a merciless manner by the freelance sculptor. I had told him about my former crush on the bigheaded dork from San Diego, but Spencer seemed to have taken this more easy than usual.

* * *

**5.2 Summer Heat**

It was unusually warm for Seattle, as the sun had kept on shining almost the whole week almost all day long.

Nevel was not around, so there were a few days on my own.

For most girls in my age, hot summer weather, a boyfriend, and a few days alone in your apartment meant a period of wild time and dolce vita, all day and especially all night.

But for me and Spencer, a few ice cream dates at plain day light had to suffice.

Of course there were still many things I liked to do along with Spencer. We loved talking abouthis days at his high school honour council, and his three days at law school. By the way, he had been expelled from there just as I had been flung from Belleview, for pulling a prank on an unpopular teacher. Neither Carly nor his grandpa knew the reason and they thought that he had retired fully voluntarily. But that was not much of an issue, after all, because Spencer had always felt misplaced at a school for sharks. He liked defending the helpless, but he hated taking care for the legal needs of snobs. That's why he had never taken his teachers serious, from elementary school through college, and ultimately also at law school.

The red hot sun was burning up the streets and parks of the city of Seattle when I met Spencer once more for an icecream. There were so many things he had to talk about.

Carly had finally found out about us, and she had been heated up more than by the radiation of thousand suns. But, fortunately, she was distracted by news from Japan. The whole web show had been selected as the American representant for the world wide contest of comedy web shows, to take place in Tokyo, the capital of Japan.[5:1]

Spencer would have wanted me to come with them, but this would have been no good idea, given Carly's mood.

In addition, the flight would have been in a transport machine. I doubted that this was even considered legal. They had been sent first class tickets by the organisers of the contest, but only three of them. But Spencer and the m other of Fredward Benson needed to come with them as responsible adults, so this had been a problem. Spencer had asked "Socko" alias Joshuah for help. This way, Josh had finally heard of our dates.

Drake and Josh were now no so amused, and Spencer had got a hard time appeasing his best pen pals.

The sun had finally had its day, and the air in Seattle was about to cool down again. My summer dreams with Spencer were apparently about being ripped at their seams.[5:2] OK, maybe we were definitely not meant to be.

* * *

**5.3 Lost In Japan**

Spencer and his teenage friends were now in Japan.

Spencer had twittered that they had already gone through quite a few adventures, and not of the pleasant sort, although they had finally made it and won the contest, inspite of their worst rivals' attempts of locking them out from the studio where the event was taking place. Given that the web show would be discontinued due to Carly's transfer to Priorwood, this award was a great conclusion of the same.

The trip in the transport plane had been one piece of horror, being in a room with a bunch of stinky possi, and then they had been paradropped over Tokyo. This had triggered the loss of some of their luggage.

They had been brought to their hotel, where they had been visited by their worst rivals, who had feigned to be nice, but got Spencer and Mrs. Benson locked into a fitness room, while abducting the kids to the opposite end of Tokyo.

The kids had won the trophy, but now they refused to return with another transport plane, and so Josh had hired a fishing boat for them. But the kids were rebelling again, as they did not want to return in that little boat, either.

This was of course thoroughly understandable, and I was so close to looking for Josh and choke him into the next millennium for doing that to the kids.

I better came up fast with a good idea for letting Carly and her friends travel back from Japan, and in a fast and safe manner, something a certain big headed dork from San Diego was apparently not able to. In this moment, I remembered Takato, the not so real but still totally helpful guy from an old Japanese ninja tradition, right? Maybe he was also an expert for crossing the mighty Pacific, just as his ancestors had done? But how was I going to get Takato show up again? I pondered for several minutes.

The next day, I would get a message from Spencer, saying that he had just learned how to fly an air force machine, from some weird Japanese pops named Takato, and that he was now going to fly the home with the kids.

Holy guacamole, the guy was abducting a Japanese airforce machine. And as the son of an US Airforce officer, he should have known that this spelt trouble, and not too little, in the case of getting caught.

* * *

**5.4 Carly At Priorwood**

Summer time was now coming to an end, and this implied the begin of a new academic year for all of us.

I hoped that my sophomore year would be a lot less boring and more useful than the last twelve months.

But now I was taking Nevel back to his first classes of the new year, and this was not an easy task, for my cousin wanted to know the details about my silently terminated relationship with Spencer. Honestly, I was not able to answer that quuestion to myself.

But now that Nevel had mentioned the name of the freak, Spencer was already trotting along, followed by his Carly.

We were now standing at his locker which he was filling with his belongings.

Carly's eyes bugged out. "Nevel? What are you doing here? Why do you keep on stalking me?"

I cleared my throat and remarked, "sorry, but this is Nevel's school, and his locker."

My cousin grinned. "Complete with a pic uof you!" He had attached a poster depicting Carly to the back wall of his locker.

Carly looked consternated. "Spencer? Pinch me! tell me that I am dreaming, ain't I?"

Spencer stammered, "honestly … no …"

Nevel offered generously to guide Carly around in order to get her started.

Carly grunted, "I do not need your help! Where do I get my locker key … or combination … whatever … and my time table?"

Spencer looked at a sheet containing those informations for new students. Unfirtunately, he did not find the answers.

Of course I would have been able to tell her, but she would not have liked it, anyways.

Carly growled, "Spencer! You are holding the sheet upside down." She grabbed it and started following the instructions.

Spencer excused himself for Carly's mood. "I am sure the school is big enough for Carly and Nevel to avoid each other's ways."

I nodded solemnly.

All of a sudden, the overhead speaker called Nevel into the office of Belinda Peeloff.

My cousin sighed, then he locked his safe carefully, waved at us, and walked away.

I told Spencer the way to the teachers' lounge. "I think Mr. Sweeney is this year's teachers' coordinator, caring especially for the new teachers and their schedules and duties.

Spencer shook my hand. "OK, I better check it out immediately. I will fetch Carly at the parking lot across the road after lunch. And Nevel will better avoid that place around then."

I nodded solemnly. "I try to tell him to stay away from that curse place …"

In this moment, Car;y stormed in, followed by panting Nevel. Carly growled, "Miss Peeloff has decided that Nevel will care for me to get started. That is so …"

Nevel smiled and promised to be very caring, as much as only possible. "Now let's go and get you the cafeteria card. You will need it for our lunch."

I grinned.

Carly was still in a stinky mood. "Where do I apply for another student caring for me?"

Nevel replied, "in Dean Peeloff's office."

I think I would better leave the kids alone and care about my own business, and Spencer was already on his way to the teachers' lounge and Mr. Sweeney.

* * *

**5.5 Calvin Coozeman**

So, this was now also my start into a new academic year, more precisely: sophomore year.

And, indeed, there were a few new students, teachers, and classes. This cried for many more or new assignments.

My class tutor and responsible teacher assigned to those among us going for a major in physics was new as well, and his name was Calvin Coozeman.[5:3] He had just graduaded from master studies at California Institute For Technology, the school that would have been my top preference if I had not decided in favour of being Nevel's guardian. Calvin, usually abbreviated as "Cal", had written his master thesis about nuclear physics and quantum theory. He claimed that Caltech was named for him, but only jokingly.

We did not waste tmuch time and started with the laboratory assignments for this term. There was a non pair count of students, thus one of us was left to work with Cal. Most of the students knew very well with whom to sign up for the laboratory places, but I had still not got any friend, so I waited until the last minute, getting automatically paired with Calvin Coozeman.

He walked up to me and asked, "you are really Melinda Crenshaw? The winner of the national science fair that has turned down Caltech in order to be with a younger remote relative?"

I gasped. "You know that story?"

Calvin nodded solemnly. "It has become common place at Caltech. Your nephie or cousin or so must be something special."

I giggled. "Yes, he is."

Cal admitted to having imagined me a a grumpy girl with thick dark framed glasses and looking like forty something.

I gasped. "Erm … sorry to disappoint you there …"

Cal chuckled silently. "OK, now it is time for your project assignments for this term. You will all build a universal power converter. And I want to see some creativity!"

This was of course vastly above the abilities of the average college student with a major in physics, but really not a new challenge for me. So, why was Cal doing this?

* * *

**5.6 Fall**

September was gone, and the usual autumn storms had not yet arrived here in Seattle, but it was just a matter of time, and in a few weeks, the whole city would get washed and lose the dirt it had accumulated during the last months.

Carly had finally told Nevel that she was thankful for his help with getting started at Priorwood, and she was no longer missing Fredward and Samantha that much, as her new class pals were infinitely much better. But this was not a reaso for her to become Nevel's girlfriend, never!

This may have been hard for Nevel to swallow, but no worse than what he had already gone through from being rejected by Leanne Carter of Zoey Brooks.

Carly was of course still living next door to Fredward, and she would see Samantha on and off in groovy smoothy. But ther worst time in her life was now over.

Unfortunately, samantha had already found a new victim, and this really hurt me. The unfortunate guy was no other than Shane Diamond, one of my competitors at aforementioned national science fair finale. He was new in Seattle, and a senior at Ridgeway.

It bothered me because someone as intelligent and inquisitive as Shane had deserved some better girlfriend than a loose creep like Samantha Puckett.

Spencer had complained that the elevator in their loft was dysfunctional, leaving a deep whole, one where it was easy to drop through in the case of not being careful. This was so totally metaphorical for the fact of Shane falling for the totally wrong girl.

I went there in order to repair the defective elevator, it would otherwise have been a veritable death trap.

According to Spencer, Shane was probably just new in town and looking for someone at his school to lean on, and Samantha — or so I concluded — was abusing this situation shamelessly. It was impossible for Shane to fall any deeper. His new "girlfriend" was sooner or later going to abuse and hurt him badly, both physically and mentally.

Another new guy at Ridgeway was a certain Pete Pearson,[5:4] and loose lass Samantha Puckett seemed to have got the hots for him as well. Pete had got a little brother, younger than Nevel, named Tyler.[5:5]

I knew Tyler from San Diego, he was a really clever and cunning little guy, always up to trick those who deserved it. Maybe there was an option, just in the case that I needed one.

By the way, Spencer was also about falling deep, as he had found an old arcade machine and was in danger of getting addicted.

This would of copurse have endangered his job at Priorwood, which he really liked so much. Someone had to do something, but certainly not "Socko" alias Joshm the king of the video game console.[5:6]

* * *

**5.7 Hard Rains**

This November in Seattle was totally characterised by rain showers whipping all over the city.

Spencer had overcome his problems with the ancient arcade machine, because he had now found a new girlfriend, Cream Fielder, his colleague and art teacher at our school. They are a great combination, and it was so much fun for our kids to watch them make out in the locker halls, as their faces were all the time covered with paint of all colours from the art room.

I was glad that Spencer was over our separation so fast, it would have had the potential to cause a lot of troubles.

Fortunately, there was no need for them to go to the bath rooms in order to clean their faces, as a few steps out on the campus were enough to get everything washed off. At certain day times, when you were facing west, the rain sprayed your face which such an impressive force, it beat each shower cabin.

But the sepia showers had also got a stern disadvantage, they used to penetrate old and untight roofs. Our apartment was safe, but Spencer talked a lot about that of nearby Parker Nichols Inn[5:7] which he was better going to repair.

Wait … Parker Nichols Inn? Was it named for the one and only patchwork family of that name I had ever heard of? At least this was suggested strongly by Spencer's property as a pel pal of "Socko" alias Joshuah Nichols.

OK, so the rain had washed away Spencer's loneliness by making Cream Fielder drop into his life like … er … rain drops. But was it always going to wash my worries away?

I seemed tp getting a bit closer to Calvin Coozeman, but that was something totally different from a crush. And, hey, he was my teacher and adviser, we would get into trouble and stuff. Teachers being too close tpone of their students were really asking for trouble, at any school with sufficiently high standards.

So there was no such thing as feelings with me for Cal, were there?

Blush!

Unfortunately, not even the dense and enduring rain of Seattle was powerful enough to be able to wash the developing shade of crimson off my face.

* * *

**5.8 Parker Nichols Inn**

Curiosity was often told to have killed the cat, but I simply had to risk it, as the lack of knowledge concerning the identity of Parker Nichols Inn was hard to bear.

For this avail, I snuck into the foyer of said hotel in order to do my research. Of course, I would have had the possibility of simply asking Spencer, but I feared that he would have been too embarrassed by talking about it in front of his sister. I was wearing dark sunshades and a dark sombrero in order to make it a lot harder to get recognised by those Parkers and Nichols creeps that I was already somewhat familiar with.

The foyer was really a bit run down. With this, I don't mean dirty or even unhygienic, but old furniture and other equipment.

And there he was indeed, the big headed freak I remember oh so well from my times in San Diego. Joshuah Nichols, otherwise known as "Socko", was apparently the doorman, complete with an old fashioned bell attached to his counter.

But was Drake also around, and when and how had they made it up to here? These questions were still unanswered.

I hid behind a news paper, which, as reveiled after checking thrice, was already way over a year old and from San Diego. I shook my head.

It would have been premature to conclude that the boys had come to Seattle not too long after the date when the journal in the foyer was printed.

I walked up to the counte and feigned looking for suitable rooms for visiting friends.

Josh twitched like the fool he had always been. "No, we have not got a four bed room."

I suggested to put a third and a fourth bed into a two bed room. But they seemed to have problems moving the beds through those much too narrow doors. "I guess you have got problems getting your head through those doors, either?"

Josh twitched and was unable to deny that.

And then Drake came down from the staircase. "Bad news, Josh …"

Josh wondered, "we have to close down?"

Drake shook his head. "I have spoken mom on the phone. She has heard good things abiut Priorwood, and now she wants to send Megan here for high school. She will come in a few weeks and try out for a scholarship. If she gets selected, she will come to live with us."

Josh grunted angrily, "aw … Megan!"

Drake sighed for utter despair, for he was unable to expect anything good from his little sister.

I asked subtly questions about the history of this hotel, and I finally got all the answers, one by one, although Josh was not really willing to talk about it, but he was not very consistent.

After the failure of the record contract with Spin City Record, Drake's career as a rock star had not been able to take off as planned. He was still giving concerts every now and then, but not on a regular base. But this did not prevent him from being the jerk he had always been and would always be.

Likewise, Josh had been rejected by all colleges, probably because he had failed miserably in some student teaching program at Belleview.[5:8]

Spencer had thereupon offered them to look ffor a job for his pal Josh alias "Socko", and he had come up with this inn.

Drake and Josh had already made some short experience with running an inn,[5:9] but inspite of having failed miserably, they had accepted the offer and taken over, about the same time I had started with college.

I removed my disguise. "OK, ou don't expect me to recommend your spelunc to anyone, do you?"

Josh twitched, and he was speechless for shock.

Drake growled, "creature!"

I grinned and walked away with those answers.

* * *

**5.9 Snowflakes**

The coldest time of the year had come. Nevel was about to visit his mom once more at Yakima spa resort for a week.

There was hardly ever any snow in Seattle, but Yakima served also as a centre for winter sports, and thus I had to plan his luggage appropriately. I did not want him to freeze or catch a cold.

The hard rains at Seattle had not been able to wash away my dubious feelings concerning my class tutor, Calvin Coozeman.

But the cold and the snows of Yakima were neither able to freeze my doubts nor to cover them with a thick white layer of ignorance and business as usual.

Nevel had already noticed something, but I had been hitherto able to keep him silent.

A few days with Nevel out in the snow would ease the pressure, but of course just temporarily.

And the harder I tried to ignore them, the stronger my feelings for Calvin would become.

I was now done with Nevel's suitcase and was ready to take him to the bus station.

Wow, were there some flakes of snow mixed into the midst of a pack of rain drops?

I knew that they were not meant to stay on the ground, but maybe it was an omen for something, whatever it was.

* * *

**5.10 Solo Oboe**

Spring was now around the corner.

I had just fetched Nevel from school, and we were bound for the shopping mall for our weekly purchases.

Nevel had got some news about life at Priorwood prep. "Carly's cousin is coming for a trial next week. She is going to play her oboe for a scholarship."

I sighed. Of course Josh had already mentioned it, but the thouyght of Megan in Seattle made me shudder like a wind from the Canadian tundra.

Nevel continued, "and our teacher for music, Lars Balthasar,[5:10] has commanded me to play the piano as a backup."

I sighed deeply, thinking, "sooner or later, Megan will find out about the connection between me and Nevel, and then hell is going to break loose."

Nevel did not yet think about the impending consequences of Megan's oprobably mischievous intentions and her most likely inevitable campaign of revenge against my family. He just kept on talking about the music. "The oboe is the most versatile of all wood wind instruments. Its sound covers a fairly huge range of notes and colours." He was apparently feeling miserable, because his only wind instrument was a plastic recorder, although he had been looking for an affordable hand carved wooden one for quite a few months. "Mastering the oboe requires a huge amount of technique and musical imagination."

Did he envy or rhaposdise Megan? Both would have been no good — or so I feared.

Nevel also mentioned that Leanne Carter was going to help out at Megan's trial event. "Of course she will blow her saxophone." He chuckled silently.

I remarked, "cool, a brass wind instrument accompanying a wood wind."

Nevel choked and thundered, "don't call the saxophone a brass wind! It is a wood wind instrument!" True, the saxophone was mostly made of metal, but this was not the criterium for assigning it to either family of winds.

I gasped, as this mistake was really embarrassing, especially in the presence of Nevel.

It would be better for me not to mess with Megan's attempt of making it to Priorwood. In any case, she would keep the "boobs", as she called Drake and Josh, busy with her pranks and distract them from messing with my business.

* * *

**5.11 Teaching At Ridgeway**

Not too many days later, Megan had actually been accepted to Priorwood High School, with a scholarship for the school's orchestra.

And now Nevel asked me in a penetrant manner, "what does it take to land a weekend job at some vulgar downtown hotel?"

I choked, because this was certainly not the kind of job Nevel would have applied for under normal circumstances, given that he usually did not like being among arbitrary people, especially not those residing in lower class inns or hotels. But the worst part was of course the fact that I knew only about one downtown inn here in Seattle, and Nevel knew it as well.

In other words: Nevel was willing to apoply for a job at Parker Nichols Inn, the spelunc run by no other than my ex crush Joshuah Nichols and his disgusting coxcomb of a step brother, Drake Parker.

This was no good, whatsoever. And I remembered that Megan would come to live with Drake and Josh when studying at Priorwood High School, and she would certainly help them run their hotel, or, rather, make their attempts of running it a worse nightmare for them than what it was already.

Thus it was not unlikely to assume that Nevel was up to such a job precisely because he **wanted** to be with Megan?

Oh shock! "Has he not yet got enough of his failed crushes, from Leanne Carter over Zoey Brooks to Carly Shay?"

OK, it would not have been a good idea to mess with his feelings. Otherwise he would stop respecting mine, and he was my only relative top trust them.

Whatever, I had other things to ponder.

Ridgeway, the former school of Carly Shay and still school of Samantha Puckett, was looking for a student teacher for science. This was the content of the message stuck to the bulletin board in he foyer of my college hall. Cal had suggested me to apply for it, as I was a good explainer of complicated scientific contexts, and not just a brilliant researcher.

Thinking about Joshuah's debacle during his student teaching program at Belleview elementary school, this appeared to me also a s an exceelent opportunity in order to show the freak who was the boss!

On the other hand, having to deal with pernicious girls like Samantha Puckett would certainly be not all that much of a pleasure, but rather cumbersome. And Fredward Benson was even worse, for he feigned being knowledgeable in scientific things, but did by no stretch of the word understand what he was talking about.

Well, there was a good news: Fredward benson had just gone aboard a high school ship, as he had won one year in such a school.[5:11]

OK, in order to get that job, I would have to agree on and go through an interview with Principal Theordore Franklin and some of the current teacher for science at Ridgeway, so I better started grabbiung my phone and doing the necessary calls.

My heart was beating at quadruple speed when I typed the digits, waiting for the voice of the school's secretary.

* * *

**5.12 Mr Henning**

Principal Franklin had been faitrly kind, and he had just taken a look at my recommendation from Cal and the school reports from Seattech, and thereupon sent me straight to the responsible teacher for science, a certain Mr. Henning.[5:12]

He looked like your typical local canditate of the green party, and he smelled this way, given that he refused to wash himself in a way different from standing half naked on his roof top in the rain. He complained a lot about those idiots of pupils at Ridgeway, especially Freddie, the worst guy in his class. "I am so glad about the departure of Fredward Benson. A few weeks ago, we had got a week of projects for the sake of the environment. And that freak had built a high technology dung heap. He had imported a rare brood of rain worms from Portugal, a transport requiring tons of petrol. What a creep!" He shuddered for disgust.

I remarked that the school ship taking him across the seven seas was not going to use any less petrol.

Henning sighed deeply. "Maybe the kids have to row the boat."

I grinned with glee, imagining Freddie to operate the oars of the slave galley."

Henning remarked that he took regularly those kids failing in the environmental project to a camp in the forests near Seattle, so-called "Camp Root And Berry". Of course it uased to take place during the period of maximal raining activity in Seattle. "This is the best way to teach the kids about the wonders of nature."

Of course I got to talk for quite some time about my invention presented at the national science fair.

And I also explained my plans for the cultivation of a mix between bananas and oranges. Of course, genetic engineering was hard to sell to a hippie like Henning. "Mainstream bananas have no fertile seeds and must be procreated by means of cloning. But this is vulnerable to germs and pests to which banans can't develop a resistance by means of natural selection." I panted heavily before continuing. "But a cross between bananas and oranges will provide for the necessary natural selection leading to resistent cultures, and even allow for semi-intensive or extensive cultivation."

These arguments for genetic manipulation as a temporary evil for the goal of working toward a more ecologically compatible agriculture worked like a charm, convincing even the hard core freak in no time.

There was now no more obstacle left on my way towards a teaching job at Ridgeway.

* * *

**5.13 Shane Diamond**

On my way out, I ran into aforementioned Shane Diamond, one of the guys I had defeated at the national science fair.

He gasped. "Mindy? It is really true? You are in Seattle?" He also explained why he had made the move from Minnesota to the state of Washington, leaving behind a host of friends, includuing his laboratory henchman Logan Mitchell.

I nodded solemnly. "Melinda Crenshaw, the one and only."

Shane had heard rumours about me being in Seattle, but he had not yet found a confirmation. "I thionk seriously about Seattech. This way I don't have to move away again. If this college is good enough for you, it will not be bad for me, either."

I nodded solemnly. "Freshman year had been boring, but now we have got a very cool class tutor, Cal." I giggled.

Shane nodded. "I have read good stuff about him on various blogs."

Now I started talking about his "girlfriend" Samantha. "Condolences for Sam." I said it as if one of his close relatives had died, because Samantha Puckett as a girlfriend was probably worse than dying a thousands of deaths.

Shane sighed deeply. "Hey, she is not that dumb as you think, she knows a lot about fine mechanics and data security. But it is over. I caught her flirting with Pete Pearson, and, on top of it all, she used me only for doing her home work and school projects, especially the scientific ones." He told me about the green project imposed upon the freshmen by Mr. Henning. Samantha had forced Shane to do everything for her.

I shrugged. "Typical Sam …" It had been obvious for me that she was only abusing him, as she had done with all of her boyfriends up to there. But that was not even all.

Shane admitted that he had already received several death threats from Samantha. She announced to push him down a deep hole when nobody was watching.

Now, that sounded really perverse, and someone should have done something about it.

Shane himself did not believe that Samantha had been pronouncing a serious menace, but I was convince of the opposite, although I had not yet got any proof.

In any case, I was sure that Shane would clearly get accepted to Seattech for the next year, especially as a former science fair national finalist. He had apparently also got offers from other colleges, just as I had had two years ago.

* * *

**5.14 Vital Surgeries**

And Shane was not the only person to apply for Seattech, of course.

But some of them were more well known to me than others.

So I found no other person than Quinn Pensky, my long distance neighbour girl and formerly most heated rival, on the list of the postulants.

Of course I welcomed this, because it would not only raise the level of Seattech even more, but also goive me the occasion to show everyone who was da boss, and that from face to face and not with some thousand miles inbetween.

Quinn was also here for another reason than an interview at Seattech. She was going to perform a surgery on the mother of Samantha Puckett, more precisely some eye lasering.[5:13]

Well, you will say that Quinn was a high school girl and not a graduate from a medical school. But she had already performed a whole lot more difficult surgeries. And she had in particular practised eye lasering at Pacific Coast Academy.[5:14] Pamela Puckett, the even more evil mother of pernicious Samantha, had already been one of Quinn's regular patients since middle school, especially for plastic surgeries for which she had used to travel to Los Angeles. The medical interventions were executed in Come On Inn, a spelunc much worse than Parker Nichols Inn. Ut was located in downtown Los Angeles.[5:15]

During the last four years, Quinn had been practicing with a junior license as a deputee of aforementioned Doctor Glazer, uncle of Zoey Brooks and family doctor of Drake Parker and Josh Nichols back at Seattle. She had been very successful not only as a surgeon, but also as a developer of new medication and medical instruments.

I guessed that Quinn would not get Pamela Puckett killed in the surgery, as bad herbs are infinitely hard to get rid off, and the Pucketts were the worst and most life threatening plague in Seattle since the foundation of the city.

By the way, Quinn had also been able to get rid of the worst threat of her life, and she had not needed a surgery for that, just a separation from Logan Reese, the worst of all hitherto beknownst coxcombs at Hollywood.

The creepy jerk had successfully hit on her over a year ago, right after she had broken up with her formwer boyfriend, Mark Del Figgalo.

* * *

**5.15 Melissa Robinson**

I had thought for several years that Zoey Brooks had been the first person in history to sense that Samantha Puckett was one of the hugest threat for mankind in general.

But this had been a mistake.

Before Samantha Puckett had taken over the position as Carly's best friend — forever, a certain Melissa Robinson[5:16] had occupied this place of honour. Like Carly's, the dad of Missy was an airforce officer, and they had been working together for a few years straight at the navy docks of Seal Beach in California, more or less on the way from Los Angeles to San Diego.

And now Missy was in Seattle, as a student at Priorwood Tech. She was so totally up to becoming Carly's number one friend again, as if all those desperate years of separation had not been. Unfortunately for Missy, Carly was still not over Sam, inspite of being at a different school since the start of the academic year, and she was trying hard to keep contact with the mean lass.

During the last years, Missy had over and over been plagued by nightmares showing that Samantha was mentally abusing Carly in the worst possible manner. "She has not only stolen Carly's heart and mind from me, but turned her slowly but surely into her own marionette to be manipulated upon whim."

OK, it had just been a series of nightmares, but Zoey's and my experiences with the blond devil had utterly confirmed Melissa Robinson's intuition.

Of course I wanted to help Missy pursuing her most noble goal of freeing Carly Shay from the mischievous mental bonds, but I was too busy with my own concerns, and so I suggested Missy strongly to contact the greatest little strategical superhero of San Diego — ever, which was no other than aforementioned Tyler Pearson, the revenger of intelligence against excessive folly.

* * *

**5.16 Ongoing Feelings**

For several months, I had been trying to hide my fledgling feelings for Calvin Coozeman from everyone, including especially from myself.

But Nevel's extremely sensitive nose had already smelled some smouldering match, and he had started to urge me to make my mind up.

I sighed deeply. But the possibility of Nevel liking Megan urged me to be honest to my cousin, who would otherwise have little reason for being honest to me during the next year when he and Megan would be class mates. "OK, it is so true, I do like Cal …" Having admitted to this, I almost felt exploding from the bottom of my head.

Nevel panted heavily. "OK, Mindy, I am so glad that you have finally found someone you can love with all your heart and all your soul."

I thought that he was exaggerating, given that I had got a hard time admitting to my feelings just for myself.

But he was probably correct, as the only problem left was the fact that Cal was one of my teachers.

OK, there was more than one class, and it was possible to avoid being taught by him.

There were now a few months of summer break before us, and I would better use them wisely.

And Nevel thought already many months and many steps ahead. "When will you marry Cal? I want to be the best man, don't forget that!"

I nodded solemnly, for putting Nevel into the list of attendents was probably inevitable, regardless of how many months there were still left unto my big moment. Of course, Cal would have to say a word about it as well. Certainly, Nevel was determined to refuse rigorously at any cost to accept a "no" as Cal's answer.

* * *

**Chapter 6 Seattech — Junior Year**

* * *

**6.1 Love Of My Life**

Summer break had seized all schools in Seattle, and the parades of Independence Days were about to swarm the streets of Seattle.

Encouraged by Nevel's supporting words, I decided finally to tell Cal about my feelings.

Of course this would mean that, regardless of his answer, it would no longer be possible for me to be in te classes advised by Cal, neither as his official girlfriend nor as a disappointed crush.

Love did come with a price.

Nevel was visiting aunt Penelope in Yakima, and this was for the last time, as his mother was abouyt to return to Seattle at the end of summer. My guardianship was thus coming to an end.

I met Cal in Groovy Smoothie, which, by the way, was now run by Terrence Barret, short T-Bo, aforementioned baskeball coach and elder brother of Michael Barret, a friend of Zoey Brooks.

T-Bo tried to sell stuff like burritos filled with rice and baked beans on a stick, along with smoothies, and he used to feel insulted by customers deeming this weird.

My heart was close to exploding and burst into smithereens when I was finally about to spit out the words "I love you,"

Calvin panted heavily, uut he was not surprised. "I know … kove you too!" Drops of sweat burst forth from his forehead. He understood what problems I had had fessing up, especially because of the class mates at college who would have felt disadvantaged. In addition, he thought about Nevel feeling neglected. But this problem was history, and, as we have seen, my little cousin had been even pushing me.

Everything felt now so different from the times of dating Spencer Shay, where I had always sensed something weird and uncanny. With Cal, everything came from within, I did not need to talk myself into something, to wonder every other second about the next step, and to try to argue Spencer about whether it was right or wrong. Quite the contrary, I felt totally melting away in his arms, and vice versa.

* * *

**6.2 Black Locker**

Summer break had been much too short, and the start into the following academic year was more critical than ever before.

Now I had taken my cousin to his first day at Priorwood Prep, and chances were high for me to run into Drake Parker and Joshuah Nichols, one of them or even both, who were most likely to get rid of Megan.

And of course Spencer was also around in order to drop Carly.

Oh yeah, there they were coming …

Spencer threw the arms around his pal "Socko" alias my fromer crush Joshuah Nichols, but he did not name him. I had always wondered whether Carly Shay had been aware of the identity of her elder brother's best pal. But maybe Spencer had been too much embarrassed to tell her. Maybe there was some margin left for blackmailing, just in case … oops, have I really said that? Erm …

Talking about blackmailing … I was even more sure that most kids here on the camous did not yet know that Drake Parker, the landlord of a run down inn located in downtown Los Angeles, was no other than rock idol Drake Bell. The latter identity was an artists' pseudonym for Drake Parker that had been chosen by his former manager. This double life was totally creepy. Someone had to do about it. And I imagined that there were still many fans of Drake here on the campus.

Now I jumped in to the mix. "OK, nice to see you, Josh!"

Drake went pale. "What is the creature doing here?"

"My little cousin, Nevel, happens top be a student here, just like Carly and Megan." I glared at the perverted jerk.

Josh twitched like a rotting fish, while Drake gasped for dismay. "Megan, you don't have to go to a school hosting the relative of a creature, if you don't want to."

Josh poked his step brother. "Your mom will not let you take her out of Priorwood just for that reason."

Drake sighed for despair.

Megan was looking for her locker. "I have ordered one in pitch black!"

I shrugged, because I had not known that it was possible to order the clour for your locker at Priorwood. But this was maybe only valid for the star of the school orchestra.

Nevel was already at his own locker. He had still got the poster of Carly attached to the back wall, but he had struck through the name "Carly" and replaced it with "Megan". Of course this was possible because of the great similarity — optical similarity, of course, as most people were able to tell the alike looking cousins apart by judging according to their demeanour.

Carly was consternated, as she deemed this totally tasteless. She begged Spencer to do something about it, but her brother had got absolutely no idea, neither what to say nor what to do.

Nevel grinned at Carly. "Have you got any problem with this?"

Megan wrapped her right arm possessively around Nevel. "OK, Carly, you have had your chance, and you have flunked it totally. Now don't dare to touch him ever again, you jealous little brat. And you boobs better stay out of this, or else …" She glared most menacingly at Drake and Josh.

Carly protested vigorously. "I am not a jealous brat!" But she was safely ignored by our respective cousins.

Nevel and Megan shrugged as they went to Megan's new locker … the only pitch black one in the whole hall.

Nevel asked megan about her oboe. "It is hidden in a pitch black case, isn't it?"

Megan grinned. "My practice oboe is still in my room at Parker Nichols Inn. The concert oboe is at the philharmonic centre of Seattle, and I will see it next week."

Anyways, my blackest fears that Nevel was stuck in yet another one sided crush had turned out completely wrong. These minutes had proven that their feelings were as two sided as can be, and there was no way for me to be any happier about this.

* * *

**6.3 All In White**

My love confession with Calvin Coozeman had taken place during the summer break, and in a fairly run down pub in downtown Seattle which was definitely not a site for the mass of Seattech students to hang around, regardless of the time of the year.

But, nevertheless, many of my fellow students have already come to know about this, although it was not clear how this had been possible. I guessed that someone knew someone who knew someone who …

In any case, my arrival at Seattech for the new term was pretty much like a gauntlet, as so many of my comrades were up to congratulating me for hooking up with Cal. Many of them had always seen that coming, and they had imagined that we would have been a totally cute couple already at the start of the previous academic year.

Some of us had decorated my locker in my absence with white ornations, insinuating an envisioned wedding all in white. Even a bunch of male students wanted to be flower girls.

So, what were the new students doing? I have already mentioned that Quinn and Shane were new at Seattech.

Philip Brownley and Ashley Gonzalez were new as well, and, as they have been dating already for many more years, they had been quite a few steps further. Ashley held her fingers aloft, adorned by a plain white engagement ring, probably as an expression of her purity. Of course, now they were the centre of the attention, as their wedding was so much closer than ours, and it was probably going to be all in white.

* * *

**6.4 Starting At Ridgeway**

My days during this academic year would see me switching forth and back: Dropping Nevel at Priorwood, my own classes at Seattech, student teaching at Ridgeway, picking Nevel from Priorwood, errands in the city, and finally home again.

Fortunately, not each and every day required that much mobility.

Student teaching was restricted to five days a month, and the first of those had just begun.

But even those few days would have been worse than many years in hell if I had been forced to teach anything to Samantha Puckett. Fortunately, this was not the case.

Fredward Benson was back from his cruise trip, as his mother had withdrawn him due to the lack of tick shampoo aboard the ship.

I took a look at the bulletin board in order to see what would be going on at Ridgeway during the following time. The most important days seemed to involve a girls choice ball. I already pitied the poor guy to be chosen by Samantha Puckett, whoever it was.

Josh Nichols had dropped out of the student teaching program at Belleview Elementary School after only three days, ruining his envisioned career as a teacher.

Spencer had dropped from law school after the same amount of time.

So I needed to hold on for at least four days in order to outdo those feebleminded freaks and make them faint into oblivion.

My first class to teach was physics for high school juniors. At first, nothing was looking unusual. but then the artificial globe on my desk started rotating forth, like a merry go round. Granted, I was talking about the laws of earth rotation, the cycle of day and night, as an example for the moment of inertia and torque. But nobody had been touching the globe.

A girl named Malika Ritter[6:1] was glaring at the artificial globe from across the class room. Had there been a connection? That would have been totally scary, such as psychokinesis.

Fortunately, this day's class at Ridgeway was now finally over, and I was already a bit late. Nevel used to turn easily impatient when not getting picked in time. But the miraculous rotation of the globe would not leave my mind during any of the following days.

* * *

**6.5 The Innovators**

I stood in the foyer of Parker Nichols Inn, still in the same place in downtown Seattle as many weeks ago when I had spied on the owners. But today, I was taking Nevel to the start of his aforementioned weekend job at this hotel.

If those creeps had known in advance whom they were going to employ, they would hardly have done so. But they had been too dumb to figure. In addition, they made the impression of an old gay couple, scaring many visitors away.

Needless to say, they were totally consternated when spotting my cousin again.

Nevel declared to be working over here from each Friday night to Sunday noon, during the following weeks.

Drake and Josh accused each other of having been the culprit to have let my cousin in. But now it was too late.

Megan grinned and welcomed her new colleague. "Hi sweetie! I guess we have got a lot to do during this weekend. You are going to stay here over night during the Fridays and Saturdays of the following weeks?"

Nevel grinned and nodded solemenly, right in front of the eyes of Drake and Josh, making them moan and twitch, just like the idiots they have always been and would always be, until the end.

Of course Nevel and Megan were doing this exclusively in order to annoy Drake and Josh.

Nevel wondered, "where are our staff uniforms?"

Megan sighed deeply. "There are none. I have told the boobs already weeks ago to get some, but …"

Nevel scratched his head. "Little wonder … your step boob would look like a dressed monkey in whatever kind of uniform."

Megan agreed wholeheartedly. "We simply can't rely on their taste, it would be a plain debacle, no matter what."

Nevel pondered silently while striding up and down the foyer. "Zoey Brooks may design suitable uniforms!"

I nodded gleefully. "That would be a great idea. She is a perfect fashion designer." It would certainly take her a few weeks to desugn and tailor the outfits, and I had to hope that Quinn pensky knew how to contact her since her graduation from Pacific Coast Academy.

Drake wondered, "you mean the hot blonde that had already designed one of my early band outfits?"

Josh poked his step brother. "Don't dare to hit on her, she is a honourable lady, not one of your potential three nighters."

Drake moaned for extreme despair. But he agreed with that idea for getting outfits.

Josh insisted in designing the socks for the hotel staff, though, as he was of course the ultimate expert in that field.

I looked at the bulletin board which contained informations about upcoming events here at Parker Nichols Inn.

Each of the following weeks was assigned another theme, but they were thoroughly recurring: Karaoke week with Drake, magic week with Josh, kissing week with Drake, canasta week with Josh, …

I shuddered for disgust.

Nevel shook his head. "Megan, I have got a better idea for action weeks."

The two of them had a short conversation in whispers.

Then Megan took a piece of chalk in order to correct the announces for the following weeks. "Solo oboe concert with piano backup, solo piano concert with oboe backup, …"

Nevel and Megan hi-fived.

For me, it was time to let them alone in the decadent inn, secure in the knowledge that Nevek and Megan would be the ones to save the hotel, whereas the "boobs" would have ruined it.

* * *

**6.6 Evil Desire**

I was in the cafeteria of Seattech, and it was now time for me to ask Quinn abvout a way to contact Zoey Brooks in order to be able to hire her for the creation of the staff outfit for Hotel Parker Nichols.

Unfortunately, there was a big problem: Quinn and Zoey were no longer talking to each other.

Theere were two reasons for that.

Number One: Qui nn had been one of the string pullers in Chase's attempt to hire Trina Vega in order to make Zoey jealous. She had been totally tired by Chase's failed attempts to get Zoey's unique attention. She had been assisted by Zoey's former best friend and their common room mate, Lola Martinez, a fledgling Hollywood starlet who happened to be related to Trinidad Vega.

Number Two: Quinn had abused Zoey's younger brother, Dustin Brooks, as a fake junior prom date in order to distract Zoey and her other friends from noticing her concubinacy with Logan Reese. On the other hand, Logan had been abusing aforementioned cotton swab freak Stacey Dillsen for another purpose, but that was not Zoey's business.

The second reason weighed more than the former.

Unfortunately, Quinn Pensky had been ruled by her lowly desires for quite a few months, which had caused her to throw herself into the arms of a mean coxcomb like Logan Reese. This had been the consequence of a failed experiment of hers which had severely feebled her mind and also caused her to flunk the afirementioned techfoots sold by Daka badly.

But last year, she had overcome the creeping mental disease and been able to get rid of her horny desire for Logan.

Apparently, Logan had not been pleased by Quinn's overdue metanoia, and strated to threaten her in all evil manners.

That had been a reason for Quinn to return to her homelands in Seattle instead of going to her true love, California Institute For Technology. "Logan would never have followed me to an excessively rainy place like Seattle."

That was a sad story, as Quinn had certainly deserved a better destiny than being Logan's girlfriemd, and now she was fairly safe from him.

In addition, Quinn had finally discovered love beyond desire, and the reason was her class mate and perfect lover boy Shane Diamond.

Alas, the "desire" of Parker Nichols Inn for perfect staff putfit was going to stay unsatisfied, as it was impossible to find Zoey that easily. I had got a few ideas, either using Terrence Barret and his brother Michael, a friend of Zoey Brooks, or by contacting Zoey's brother Dustin, still a student at Pacific Coast Academy, via his class mates Ashley Blake,[6:2] a teenage Hollywood diva that had once been one of Megan Parker's best friends.

* * *

**6.7 Stacey At Parker Nichols**

Once more, I had taken Nevel to the foyer of Parker Nichols Inn in order to let him start his weekend job.

Josh was moaning, because he had figured that Drake had once more taken money from the hotel cash in order to pay cinema tickets for his girl of the week.

All those relationships had in common that Drake had to spent a lot of bucks, but was tired of the girl anyways after just a few days.

This was hardly any longer to bear, not for me, but eve less for Megan who wished so much for a stable relationship for her brother. In the beginning, she had been proud of Drake's many girlfriends, as she had deemed it as a sure sign of a superstar. But then she had come to see that the count of girlfriends was not the true criterium for becoming above average , even in the Hollywood business.

Josh was even worse, because he was unable to see which sort of girls was able to like him for good, and he was takiing Drake's opinion about girls more and more for undisputable truth.

In this moment, a new guest arrived, and I was able to recognise her from times gone by. It was no other than Stacey Dillsen, the cotton swab fairy. She was hoilding a cotton swab sculpture in her hands. "A present for the house. It is a model of my dream hotel." She spoke with a lisp and glared at Drake with wexcessively hungry eyes.

The coxcomb, disgusted by Stacey's uneasy pronunciation, shrugged carelessly.

Not caring about Stacey's demeanour, Megan started the registration procedure for Stacey.

The freak girl explained that she was a student at nearby Seattle Vocational College for construction trades. "I am going for an associate degree in carpentry. My name is Stacey Dillsen, from Swampscott in Massachusetts. My sister Suzanne works as a nurse in St. Steve Hospital in Mississippi.[6:3] My hobbies are astronomy, acrobatics, sculpting with cotton swabs …"

Her lispy voice hurt everyone, especially Drake Parker. The jerk took for that reason Stacey's gift for the house and stuffed it into the garbage basket.

Stacey started weeping bitterly.

Josh was consternated. "Drake, how are you treating our guests? This is not nice!"

Now I realised that Josh and Stacey would have been a great couple, after all. Stacey suffered as much from being mobbed for her lisp as Josh for his big head, as much for her hobbies of cotton swab sculpting and for hurting herself in hatha yoga asanas as Josh for knitting fanciful socks, playing canasta, and performing magic tricks that used to go awry.

But getting them actually together, which would also have driven Drake as crazy as he had always deserved it, would still require some work …

Stacey was still a misguided Drake fangirl, inspite of having him seen stuff her model into the trash bin, and Josh was stupidly hankering after girls out of his league.

But at least it was very easy to get warmhearted Josh to help Stacey repair the cotton swab model of her dream hotel. I also suggested Stacey to use better glue than that. "Grizzly Glue[6:4] from Grizzly industries glues in seconds and sticks for years."

* * *

**6.8 Puff Of Smoke**

Malika Ritter had actually challenged Fredward Benson to the girls choice dance.

The horny creep had only accepted it reluctantly, as he had not yet given up completely on Carly Shay, although his chances had been dwindling severely after the transfer of Spencer's little sister to Priorwood Prep and the end of the web show.

Well, actually, the web show had been continued with a new moderator named Cornelius Gibson, alias Gibby. This was a guy in their class who used to run around topless most of the time.

Malika seemed to surprise more and more with her tricks, appearing and disappearing almost randomly out of and into a cloud of dust.

I had really not yet found a natural explanation for her tricks.

I did not believe that Malika was actually interested in Fredward, rather, she wanted to prevent him from corrupting Carly Shay. Unfortunately, this girls' choice evening had not been enough.

Regardless of the source of Malika's supernatural powers, I decided to pronounce an idea.

Josh Nichols had scheduled a week with magic tricks, probably lame ones that never worked or were simple frauds to be reveiled with ease. Noone laughed for excitement. If anyone in Josh's audience was entertained, it was because they had to laugh about Josh's stupidity and clumsiness, not because of tricks only he believed to be exciting.

But Malika was quite another story. Disappearing in a apuff of smoke and reappearing from the middle of the land of nowhere would truly entertaining.

Nevel and Megan liked the suggestion. They had just attracted many more visitors with a brilliant performance of Ravel's _Boléro_.

Everything was fine between Nevel and Megan. They were more and more flying above the clouds, escaping the vulgar and insane mass of mankind. Their love had provided them with angels' wings, allowing them to reach the end of the rainbow, side by side, just as birds of a feather were supposed to be.[6:5]

* * *

**6.9 Winter Gap**

Winters in Seattle, as is well known, are dominated by huge amounts of rain.

As that is not a really popular weather, visitors tried to avoid the emerald city during that time as much as only possible. This was a problem for those running hotels, including Parker Nichols Inn.

Nevel and Megan were working on the problem.

Megan had suggested to let it snow over christmas, right in te hotel. She had once upon a time been able to freeze the room of Drake and Josh in San Diego.[6:6]

I wondered of course how she had achieved something like that. That had most likely been a very interesting technology, and I had missed out on it. Megan was not an engineer, so she had most likely got some help, and definitely not Josh's, as the whole plan had been an operation with the purpose of pulling a prank on Drake and Josh.

Megan explained that the winter maker had been invented by Quinn Pensky, and she had bought it over the interweb for a cheap price.

That had been good for her, for I would have sold such an invention for an infinitely much higher price.

Of course it would have been rude to install and operate the winter machine in all rooms of the hotel, as noy all of the guests were likely to enjoy sleeping in the ice and snow. But reserving one room for a white christmas celebration sounded like some excellent idea,

I was so curious about the technological details of Quinn's winter maker, which — according to Megan — was very smll and easy to install.

According to Drake, frosty christmas celebrations needed to be accompanied by hot rhythms. "I need a rocking christmas tune."

Josh suggested, "a female company voice for a duet would not hurt, either."

Drake felt like melting away upon that suggestion. "It needs to be a really hot one."

That was probably correct, and Drake's conclusion had been totally expected, but where to get a suitable singer from?

Hey, I had already got some vague idea.

When leaving New York City, Adelaide Singer mentioned an alike looking cousin of her best friend Geena Fabiano, a fledgling rock star known going by the name "Lucy Stone", and she had been said to live in the state of Washington.

Of course I needed to contact her first. And, as usual, this was once more one of those "knowing someone who knows someone who …" kind of sort ot procedures.

* * *

**6.10 Christmas Rock**

Well, Addie Singer was a friend of Megan Parker, and so I begged the latter into contacting the former.

This had been the easy part, as Addie was still where she had been three years ago.

But Geena Fabiano had been another story. She seemed to have changed a lot since my days at the science fair.[6:7]

Adelaide guessed that it was all the fault of Mary Ferry and Duane Ogilvy, who had once upon a time used Geena as a test object for their experiments. "Maybe Geena has swallowed too much of the drug developed by the freaks. Mary and Duane deny everything."

That sounded creepy, but it did not help in any way locating Lucilla Stone.

But Nevel had actually been able to locate her over the interweb, using his virtual connections via _Nevelocity_.

And there she was, the typical rocker girl, rigged and ready for hitting off a Christmas party concert with Drake Parker. Well, she had not known that this inn owner was no other than formerly most promising teenage rockstar Drake Bell.

In order to distract people from the proper destiny of his step brother, Joshuah Nichols had regularly placed pictures of Drake, represented as a perfect super star, in all major cities of the country.

Of course, people jad wanted to order tickets for his concerts, but they were always — according to the official informations provided by his "manager" Josh — sold out. Even people trying to book a place ion a concert by Drake announced for the second to next year had to be disappointed.

But now Lucilla was reminded vaguely of the star, both by hearing the voice and by seeing the face of Drake Parker.

Megan and Nevel had finally attached and ativated the loud speakers, allowing for the party to begin.

Stacey had still not been able to find some regular housing, and so she was still living at Parker Nichols Inn, but instead of paying for it, she made another sculpture for the foyer, week after week. She had espexcially provided for the Christmas decoration, of course using lots of cotton swabs and industrial glue.

Drake had always tried hard to get rid of her, but Josh had defended her and let her stay, without giving any reason for it.

Now Stacey and Josh were carefully watching Drake and Lucy starting their great Christmas karaoke.

In this moment, Malika Ritter, who had already recently entertained the hotel guests by knotting fork pronks in a telekinetic manner, made a mistle toe appare from a puff of smoke above Josh's and Stacey's head.

Nevel had just started the winter maker system, and snow flakes were now about to come down from the ceiling.

Megan poked her step brother. "Hey, boob, don't you see the mistle toe? You have to kiss Stacey!"

The bigheaded freak twitched, but he gave in and obeyed Megan's command.

In this moment, Drake and Lucy were singing _All I want for Christmas is you._[6:8]

In order to adapt to the cold, Josh and Stacey had to snuggle closer and closer.

The audience started swooning when they saw the cuteness of the two people.

Finally, Josh admitted that Stacey's heart was his greatest Christmas gift … ever!

Lucy and Drake kept on rocking. It was obvious that the rocker lady had already recognised as the big star of the posters. But there was a simple way to check whther the hunch was justified. At the end of the performance, she grabbed Drake and pulled him into a kiss, pretending it to be part of the show. And she was definitely not disappointed …

* * *

**6.11 Prince Federico Eduardo**

The employees of Parker Nichols Inn had still not got any decent uniforms. Finding Zoey Brooks was harder than expected. And after having finally been able to talk to her little brother, it turned out that Zoey was very busy making costumes for Hollywood. Usually, fashion labels in New York City were up yo that, but they were busy for another reason.

I remembered my encounter with Harold Joiner during the flight from New York City to Seattle. He had told me that his outfit had been designed by one Amanda Cantwell, employee of Mad Style in New York City.

Nevel figured that Amanda was often visiting operas, her favourite being Giuseppe Verdi's _La Traviata_. Along with Megan, he had immediately got the idea of paying Mad Style with a performance of a few tunes from that opera. This should be an easy task for my cousin and his sweetheart.

After contacting Oscar Ceptionist, the doorman of Mad Style, it was clear why the guys in New York were too busy.

The royal family from some Spanish speaking country was coming for a visit, and the appropriate outfit for the ceremony had to be designed.

Amanda Cantwell was equally busy, but she insinuate that for some proper payment, she would not be uninterested in making us those uniforms, delegating her other tasks to her beast of burden True Jackson.

Nevel started negotiating, talking about a performance of a tune from _La Traviata_.

Alas, Amanda was not content with one piece, she wanted the whole opera. This sounded like quite some burden, but Nevel and Megan declared themselves up to the task.

Josh had used an interweb search engine in order to retrieve informations about the visit of the purple family form some latin american state. There were pictures of its members. He told us, "wow, they are still looking for a hotel for their visit to Seattle and Vancouver."

Drake grinned, remarking that this sounded like business.

OK, Parker Nichols Inn had improved, but was it really suited for hosting most noble visitors from abroad?

I gazed once more at the picture of the honourable family, feeling my eyes bug out.

Prince Gabriel[6:9] looked exactly like Fredward Benson.

Random, conspiracy, or a real blood connection?

* * *

**6.12 Hotel Furniture**

Josh had officially applied for hosting the royal family in his inn.

But the main problem was the miserable furniture and equioment in here.

Princes were accustomed to using forks, knives, and spoons made of silver for dining instead of dirt cheap brass tools.

Likewise, the furniture here was made of plywood, not of solid oak with golden ornations, which would have been more suitable for inns of the class usually visited by kings and similar folks.

OK, I knew some scientific tricks to make brass or steel look like silver, at least superficially.

Josh appreciated that idea, but he came up with something completely foolish or completely foolish, depending on how it would turn out:

As a woosdhsop student, Stacey Dillsen was able to build new furniture from affordable materials, but those would not have been suited for the nobility. But no hotel in the world had hitherto been able to host royal visitors in fluffy cotton swab beds. "This will be a great honour for the rulers of … dunno where … that they will not be able to turn down."

OK, either Hotel Parker Nichols would turn into the laughing stock of the city, or it would set a mile stone in the history of hotels.

Now it was up to Drake to decide. After pondering thrice, which meant sending perverse messages to his lovergirl Lucilla Stone, he replied: "OK, Josh!"

The tester sent forth by the agency selecting the hotel for the royal visitors would show up during the next days, of course without reveiling himself in advance as a judge. Would this go well? Our competitors included at least six star Hotel Chambrolay, the best managed chain of hotels throughout the United States of America.[6:10]

* * *

**6.13 The Other Cheek**

Leanne Carter had won Seattle's beauty pageants for eight years straight. She had been one of the masters of kindness, though, and never vilified the other participants, not even all those envious beasts that had always tried to murder her in order to get her out of her way.

And now another pageant was right before the girls of the emerald city.

Quinn told me that she had used to participate in those contests as a pre school kid,[6:11] of course following the wish of her perversely stupid mother, who was unable to tell an alpaca from an ostrich. She was still embarrassed for that, although eleven years had passed ever since. Unfortunately, she had been reminded of her bad old time only recently. The organisation committee had invited her as a follow judge for the upcoming contest for which Leanne Carter was — as expected — the huge favourite.

And Quinn reveiled also another fact.

Samantha Puckett had also participated in those contests as a young girl, and she had been excluded one day for having tried to kill Leanne after the contest by pushing her down a staircase after the Mary Sue had been found all hurt an bleeding.

Given her recent death threats against Shane, that was so believable in my eyes.

Her ban was now about to expire, so Samantha was expected to come back any time in order to get back at Leanne.

I wondered why Samantha had only been excluded for a few years.

The reason had been simple: Leanne refused to witness against Samantha. Her forgivenness prevented her from doing so. Instead, she claimed to have fallen because of being just too clumsy.

So, what to do? Someone had to protect the Maruy Sue from the devil incarnate and take care for justice.

* * *

**6.14 Bigfoot**

Not much later, a very weird guest enrolled in Parker Nichols Inn.

The aforementioned tester had already been here and — surprisingly in my eyes — approved of the novel idea of cotton swab padded queen size beds for the noble family. Now it seemed to be business as usual.

But Sidney Van Gurbin,[6:12] Drake's and Josh's new guest, looked totally creepy. He introduced himself as the author of the record breaking bestseller _Bigfoot — True Or Real?_

OK, there had been many people making claimns about that bigfoot. There was even a pseudoscientific discipline named cryptozoology. Some of them may have dome some research worth of my respect.

But his book was filled with the foul stench of cheap sensationalism.

Carly Shay was curious, and she wanted to go to the mountains where bigfoot had been seen last time — at least according to the statements found in van Gurbin's book.

Spencer was here in order to borrow Josh's camper for a trip with Carly into the forrests and mountains. He did not believe in bigfoot, but, instead, in a so-called beavcoon, a mixture between a beaver and a racoon.

They had to postpone their trip into the summer break, though, as a weekend's trip was not supposed to suffice.

I objected to letting Spencer and Carly alone in the wastelands, but of course I could not prevent them from doing so.

Josh admonished his pal Spoencer, "but bring my camper back, I have not yet paid it completely."

Spencer grinned. |OK, when have I ever lost anything borrowed?"

Carly used her fingers in order to count. "Once … twice … thrice …" She was soon switching to her second hand.

Spencer yelled at his sister, telling her to stop counting.

Nevel whispered to me, "I have found some brown fur in the luggage of Van Gurbin when cleaning up his room."

I shook my head, because I had seen that coming. Van Gurbin was nothing but a charlatan dressing in furry costumes, just in order to sell a worthless book.

Too bad Spencer and Carly were not willing tp believe me.

* * *

**6.15 Samantha's Victims**

Seattle Pageant was over, and recently pardoned Samantha Puckett had actually won it.

I had not been there, but Quinn Pensky had been watching very carefully, more than necessary for a judge.

Samantha had won with a little dancing performance, although she really sucked at dancing. She had been assisted by her former dancing teacher Ernest Lane.[6:13]

There were three reasons for her victory, and Quinn reveiled me both of them:

First, Quinn had bribed the responsible magistrate with pork chops. Then she had produced some proof that Leanne was a pagan, which, in virtue of the Christian sponsors, was a reason for a silent disqualification. And, finally, the girl performing the dancing was not actually Sam, but her monozygotic twin sister Melanie.[6:14]

Quinn's supreme biological knowledge allowed her to distinguish monozygotic twins with ease.

As usual, Leanne did not care about having lost and been silently disqualified, and she did not loose her kindness towards the foes.

* * *

**6.16 Abducted At Birth**

I had not known before that Samantha had got a monozygotic twin sister named Melanie. But Quinn had been their medic for twelve years already.

Melanie was still a student at Pacific Coast Academy, whereas Samantha had been there for a few weeks only, and thereupon been expelled upon Zoey Brooks's pressure.

This way, Quinn had learned a lot about monozygotic twins. She had especially studied the medical history of the Puckett twins since their birth which had already caused some marks that made it possible for Quinn to distinguish them.

And now I wondered whether she was able to tell whether Fredward Benson and Prince Gabriel from that Spanish speaking country were twin siblings. Strangely, Fredward used to say a lot of Spanish stuff that he was not even able to understand. This indicated that he had been as a little child in a Spanish speaking environment.

Quinn deemed all this plausible, but she needed to perform tests on the two young men before coming to a conclusion.

At the same time, Nevel was trying to retrieve and study old news reports about the birth of Prince Gabriel, hoping to find some hints. One remarkable thing had been easy for him to figure:

One of the responsible medics had been a dentist named Doctor Wheeler,[6:15] who was now operating here in downtown Seattle. He was especially the dentist of Carly Shay, as I would figure soon thereafter.

And now I remember Toplin Wheeler from San Diego, another boy looking exactly like Fredward Benson. I did not believe into the randomness of this incident.

There must have been something fishy, like, a royal triplet torn apart not long after birth.

That would have been a giant scandal, and it was necessary to be very careful when daring to present those as facts to the broader public.

* * *

**Chapter 7 Seattech — Senior Year**

* * *

**7.1 Wondercousins Activate**

Summer break had come, and there was some time left for me to investigate the potential blood relationship between Prince Gabriel and Fredward Benson.

The visit of the royal family to Seattle, staying the the wonderfully equipped inn of Drake and Josh, had been a plain success.

Spying was indeed supposed to be some excruciatingly dangerous venture, so I wished to have some telepathic powers at my disposal, just as Malika.

The teenage witch had to think very hard in order to produce a possibility for doing so.

I alone was too feeble, but when joining forces with my favourite relative, videlicet with Nevel Papperman, there was — or so wagered "Magic Malika" — a chance of doing so. She had only heard it yet work in the case of twin siblings, but not necessarily monozygotic ones, which left the two of us with a slim chance of being able to wreak some telepathic havoc when working together.

The fundamental condition for this to work was that of thinking about the same thing at the same time.

Only in such a moment would it be possible for us to exercise telepathic powers if the sort operated on a regular base by Malika.

Of course it was better for us to practice the tricks together before trying to apply any of them in a situation where it came down to it.

Unfortunately, things used to work much better in certain toons and comics than between us.

Nevel and I felt that the resonance was certainly out there, but it was not a given. Levitating a pin for the first time had already been taking us some hundreds of attempts.

But we started improving after some more hours of practice.

But when would we have to strike for the first time?

* * *

**7.2 Into The Forrests**

Spencer Shay and his sister Carly had finally made that trip into the forrests and mountains near Seattle, ready to find a bigfoot or a beavcoon, respectively. But it was so obvious for me that they would just be lost out there, regardless of the reality of either of those strange beasts.

Not even Cream Fielder, the almost wife of Spencer Shay, had been able to dissuade him, although she had painted a wall sized picture of a beavcoon just for him.

They would have liked to take Fredward Benson along, but — according to Mrs. Benson — the creep next door was behaving a lot weirder as of recent.

The two of them were unable to get married and move in with each other before Carly would leave their loft for good, though.

Anyways, Spencer and Carly were out there and likely to be eaten by the wolves and bears.

Nevel and I had decided to follow them. Of course we had noty got a camper, but only my old fashioned car and two tents.

It was not hard to follow the traces of the Shay siblings, as Josh's rusty camper was already leaking guts. So, even if there was bo bigfoot, and the wolves and bears were of the opinion that Spencer, and thence Carly, were not tasty enough for their purposes, they would still be stuck out there because of the lack of fuel, or coolinmg water, or lubrificant … whatever was going to happen first.

The sun had been burning mericlessly all day long, but soon it would disappear beyond the gentle waves of the mighty Pacific.

I guessed that Spencer was enjoying sunset for artistic reasons and fogetting completely about the practical problems out in the forrests.

We had halted my car in some silent clearing, ready to take the mountain path through the shrubs for further exploration.

But there was another car, and this was not Josh's camper, but it looked exactly like the vehicle of van Gurbin.

Oh year, we had so seen this coming.

The creepy charlatan was trying to fool Spencer and Carly again.

In any case, the sun was now setting, and we had to stay close to our car. Bigfoot or not, it was not safe out there once dark night had arrived.

But we were able to check out on Carly and Spencer telepathically before going to sleep. They appeared to be safefor te moment, but Spencer was surely going to mess it up.

* * *

**7.3 The Mean Cheater**

We had been taking turns guarding the camp, all night long.

Sun was now rising in the east, and we were still dealy tired. But we had to move on. I took some coffee, but Nevel was not yet old enough for consuming huge amounts of caffein. Or maybe he was rejecting coffee for ethical reasons. Since his crush on Leanne, he had started adopting some of her views, something which had not gone away even when he was over her. He had also "learned" some things from Zoey and Carly.

For that reason, I had to support Nevel for a few minutes more. The fresh air was allowing him to wake up much faster than in the city.

The sun was still low when we spotted van Gurbin, dressed as a bigfoot, roaming some clearing and approaching the camper.

Nevel and I thought simultaneously of the same thing, and … bang … the zipper in the bigfoot costume went open, revealing van Gurbin in front of the eyes of Carly and Spencer.

Filled with embarrassment, van Gurbin was running away.

The Shay siblings wondered how that had happened. But at least Carly abandoned her hopes.

Unfortunately, Spencer was still wildly obsessed with the idea of finding beavcoon.

But Carly kicked her brother's butt. "Cream and grandpa will not like it."

The law school droput sighed deeply, and he returned to the camper, ready to return to town. "But one day, I will be back, and not rest before finding beavcoon!"

* * *

**7.4 The Report**

Summer break was over, and this reduced the time available for further research, but there had been asome others doing the research for us.

Nevel and Megan had contacted Royce Bingham,[7:1] an official governmental spy.

And the result of the investigations actioned by the undercover agent, based on the press minutes from the times of the birth of Prince Gabriel, was most striking.

Doctor Wheeler had been the assistant of the official medic of the royal family during the pregnancy and birth of the prince. And he had been accompanied by recently hired midwife Marissa B.

Drake Parker had figured a bit earlier that Doctor Wheeler was the uncle of the coxcomb's former friend Thornton.[7:2]

So, Doc Wheeler had got a nephiew that looked exactly like one of the kids whose birth he had been supervising?

Oh yeah, that must have been a messy accident. Of course there must have been a connection.

The medical minutes of the preganacy of the queen, back then probably just a princess, had indicated clear signes of a multiple pregnancy. Yet only one boy had come out of it, well, according to the official press communiqué. This was confirmed by Doctor Glazer who had gone through the hospital's reports.

The conclusion was a clear as plain daylight:

There had indeed been several monozygotic children coming out of said pregnancy. One of them was Prince Gabriel, and he had stayed with his mother, while two others, now officially known as Fredward Benson and Toplin Wheeler, had been taken to Seattle by Doctor Wheeler and widwife Marissa Benson, respectively.

Doctor Wheeler had also faked the birth documents of the two perversely abducted royal heirs, or at least effected that forgery.

Of course the boys needed to be informed about their real identity, and the culprits needed to be reveiled and convicted for the misdeed.

OK, but who was going to tell whom, and how would we prevent some great public scandal from breaking out prematurely? The perversity of baby abduction needed to be brought to the public, but not before those involved were able to stand throough the inevitable stress.

So, Freddie had been acting weird as of recently, but we had not known why.

Cream Fielder told us now that — in Marissa's mind — he seems to be absentminded in Seattle, not know his way around as usual, and sometimes even get lost in Bushwell Plaza.

I gasped, as this sounded as if , well, Fredward was not Fredward, he had been replaced with … Prince Gabriel? And Freddie was now in Latin America, preparing himself for the life as a king of his fathers' country?

There was not yet a proof for it, but it would have made sense.

Talking to Marissa benson about this would have been a fatal mistake, because she would possibly have started committing more crimes in order to hide her old misdeeds.

* * *

**7.5 La Traviata**

Amanda Cantwell, the trusty employee of Mad Style, had actually completed her design of the uniforms for the staff of Parker Nichols Inn.

The royal guests had been the first to see Drake and Josh, Megan and Nevel, as well as a few others wearing them.

Josh had been the one to knit the uniforms, though, as Amanda had not got a better knitting slave at her hands due to other important obligations of Mad Style.

As aforementioned, the price previously agreed upon was a perfoermance of al;l the music of Amanda's favourite great opera, Giuseppe Verdi's _La Traviata_.

And now this recompensation was due.

Amanda Cantwell was coming to down in order to watch Nevel and Megan perform all the tunes on their respective instruments.

Nevel and megan had already practised this from morning sun til dine during a few days of their summer break, but this was not everything necessary for the performance.

Spencer and Stacey had d been busy with the stage set decorations and the coulisses. Needless to say, knitting and cotton swabs were featured most prominently.

Amanda was not coming alone, she was accompanied by aforementioned Bellman Oscar E. Ceptionist … weird name, if you ask me. And after enjoying _La Traviata_, they would stay in the state of Washington for the purpose of visiting a so-called webicon.

But now everythinng was rigged and ready in the cabaret room of Parker Nichols Inn.

Unfortunately, Oscar and Amanda were not really a couple. Quite the contrary, Amanda Cantwell was engaged to some creepy supermodel and basketball star named Brock Champion. He was usually playing somewhere in South Americs.

Wait … South America … such as prince Gabriel's homelands, or the shrubs growing Peruvian puff peppers and feeding hoards of grazing alpacas?

OK, that was not relevant for the time being.

I have said "unfortunately" because manda and Oscar should have been a couple. Maybe there was some work to be done.

Nevel's and Megan's performance was totally heart tearing, especially that of _Sempre Libera_.

Well, I did not really know the lyrics, and Megan and Nevel were not singing along as they were busy concentrating on their instrumental performance. Well, it was probably not easy to blow the oboe and sing a song at the same time.

But Amanda was rhapsodising in a swoon when sitting next to Oscar and listening to the sublime tune of Megan's oboe and Nevel's piano backup.

And there was another reason why Amanda would have wasted herself on someone like Brock Champion, an incredible jerk and jock.

Needless to say, Amanda was perfectly happy about the wonderful performance of my cousin and his sweetheart.

* * *

**7.6 Giving Thanks**

The concert had been taking place at the beginning of the Thanksgiving week.

The webicon was planned for the three days following the Thanksgiving feast proper.

And now it was time for the big party at Parker Nichols Inn.

I hated this sort of stupid feasts, probably because my parents had always been impossibly oldfashioned upon this sort celebrations, scaring many guests away.

Unfortunately, Josh was embarrassing both as a host and as a guest, and Drake … well … he was Drake, and that says it all.

Cal was not here, but I had got many other occasions during the year in order to say thanks to him.

Unfortunately, Drake and Josh had not yet really been grateful for my efforts in order to stabilise their inn, and especially for having provoded them with optimal girlfriends.

Josh and Stacey had been one heart and one soul since last Christmas. They wanted to marry next spring, but theuy had not yet organised all that much, because the inn had started turning more and more popular since the royal visit.

Drake had never had any reason for hitting on other girls since his karaoke duet with rocker babe Lucilla Stone. And thanks to his new true girlfriend, he was about finding his way back into the record business. Diamond Records[7:3] was about to build up Drake and Lucy as a rock duet.

Of course Drake would thereupon not have enough time left to care about the inn as he did now, but Josh was already making plans about employing some permanent staff in order to make up for the gap.

Nothing like that would have been possible before my first intervention here in their business.

And of course, Carly Shay had not yet been really thankful for having saved her from the pernicious influence of Samantha Puckett and Fredward Benson, although her life had ever since been a lot better and more peaceful.

The Thanksgiving party was over, and tonight there were many guest that had come to Seattle in order to visit the Webicon during the following three days.

* * *

**7.7 The Cosplay**

The webicon hosted a lot of meetings of a variety of online communities, such as web shows and multiplayer online role playing games.

Oscar and Amanda had enrolled in particular for a cosplay or stume fest based on their favourite anime, _Space Plantation_.[7:4]

The event took place in Olympia, the capital of the state of Washington. Along with Nevel, I had decided to accompany the hotel guests who wanted to participate to the halls hosting the event, such as Amanda Cantwell and Oscar E. Ceptionist. During my second year at Seattech, I had been here in Olympia for a project. This explained my knowledge of the location.

Spencer Shay was also coming to the webicon, He was about to participating in anotrher cosplay about an online games for utter freaks, _Worf Of Warlords_.[7:5] He would presenta costume of one of the superheroes of the game series, as certain Aruthro. Josh had made his costume, and it looked ridiculous in my eyes, but freaks were just like that.

Compared to the freaks from _World Of Warlords_, those of _Space Plantation_ looked tame. Amanda had designed and tailored the costumes for herself and for Oscar, and they were really nicely matching, which was certainly a big advantage over costumes made by ignorants and amateurs.

This had also been remarked by many other visitors of the event who consequently guessed that Oscar and Amanda were an established couple.

Too bad a certain Brock Champion was standing in their way. He was lucky to be in South America instead near Amanda, for otherwise I would have joined mental forces with Nevel in order to blow the coxcomb into the next millennium, freeing thusly the way for Oscar to Amanda's heart.

So, the costumes of Oscar and Amanda were great, but beaten by some visitor from California enrolled at Drake's and Josh's hotel as Olivary Biallo.[7:6]

Biallo was cosplaying a moon worshipper. He had been practising this for several years and fooled many people in this manner. His costume was very complicated, and it depicted a variety of classic lunar deities, such as Artemis.

The judges evaluated the applause attracted by Olivary Biallo, and they were unable to avoid awarding him with the first prize for his moon planter's costume.

Olivary Biallo reveiled that his proper named was Jerome Crony, and he had always wanted to be a costume designer. "But my friend Loomer would have killed me when finding out."

Loomer was just one mean bully, and I guesses the same to be valid for Brock Champion, the fiancé of Amanda Cantwell.

Fortunately, Biallo alias Crony had now been separated from William Loomer after high school, and I hoped the same to happen to Amanda and Brock.

Even without telepathy it was not hard to figure that Oscar was suffering more from being rejected by his Vice President than losing out to the weird Californian moon planter. And Amnanda would have been dishonest denying that she had more fun cosplaying with Oscar than doing anything she could have done with Brock.

By the way, Spencer even won the cosplay award for his _World Of Warlords_ costume.

Eric Blonowitz, an old lunatic friend from Belleview times who was also enrolled in Parker Nichols Inn, along with his inseparable partner Craig Ramirez, won the _Galaxy Wars_ cosplay.

Now it was time for me to return to Seattle.

* * *

**7.8 Prince And Commoner**

A biot moere than a month later, I had made my New Year's resolutions. First, I wanted to figuure whether Fredward Benson and Prince Gabriel had really traded lives, and how they had achieved.

According to Amanda Cantwell, the prince had been annoyed to no end by his life as a future king. He had evek tried to run away in New York with a certain True Jackson, the youngest Vice President at Mad Style, and to accept a job as a waiter in some lower class restaurant in Manhattan. This indicated that Gabriel was committing this fraud voluntarily.

Second, I needed to break up Brock and Amnanda in favour of Oscar, as it was so unfair to let him suffer.

I knew that relationships between fashion designer and supermodel were a plain catastrophe that should never occur, as those are completely different motivations. Fashion designers expose a creative mind, while supermodels are only interested in exhibiting their body.

Aforementioned ultrajerk Logan Reese, who was also an aspiring male supermodel, had once hit on most promising fashion designer girl Zoey Brooks, but only abused her in a decadent manner. There was little doubt that Brock was trying to enslave Amanda in a similar way. And the problem was that Amanda was too warmhearted to forgive Brock's abusiveness. I concluded this from Zoey Brooks's reluctance of giving up on considering Logan as a friend, although he had treated her literally like dirt from the first day of her life at Pacific Coast Academy.

Now it was time for the New Year's celebration at Parker Nichols Hotel, and Nevel was responsible for the concert, along with hhis sweetie Megan, of course. He let his fingers dance across the keys of the piano.

* * *

**7.9 Telepathy**

These were the first days of classes of the new year according to the Calendar.

I was still occasionally student teaching at Ridgeway, and today, it was the class of Samantha Puckett and of Fredward Benson. Unsually I would have hated to teach the blond devil, but now I considered it as a perfect occasion for tapping Freddie's and Sam's minds with my own in order to figure what had been going on during the visit of Prince Gabriel in Seattle.

Of course I was still convinced of the lookalikes having traded places, and maybe "Fredward" was still Prince Gabriel in disguise.

Unfortunately, as you know, I was not able to exercise telepathy on my own, but only in concordance with Nevel, and only efficiently in the case of havingthe same thought at the same time. For that reason it was necessary to sneak my little cousin in, now matter how.

But there was a simple idea: I made the physics of vibrations the topic of my science classes for that week, and, as we know, the sound of music was essentially caused by vibrations of the instruments or their environment caused by the instruments.

In the case of Nevel's piano, the vibrations of the piano chords were responsible, whereas the sound of his recorder was essentially a vibrationg air column. And this was certainly a good enough excuse for taking Nevel to these classes for a demonstration of the relevant physical principles responsible.

Our thoughts were probably propagating in a similar way, or that's why we used terms like "good vibes" in order to describe influences on our mental disposition. And there was certainlky a phenomen of resonance responsible for the fact that Nevel and I were able to wreak severe havoc when thinking about the same thing at the same time.

All students except Samantha were excited when getting to know about today's topic.

We started with the vibrations of the piano.

The moment of truth was approaching, as Nevel and I had agreed to tap the mind of Fredward in the moment of the completion of a certain accord. And the tune played by Nevel was the national anthem of Prinnce Gabriel's homeland.

The sound of the last quaver was drifting away, and … boom …

Oh yeah, "Freddie" was indeed no other than Prince Gabriel of that Spanish speaking South American kingdom. But he was not really sad about having left it befind, and his life in Seattle was a voluntary one, just as suggested by Amanda's report about his temporary escape into the lower middle class of Manhattan. Gabriel was even thinking about Fredward.

Likewise, Samantha's thoughts reveiled her as having ben essentially the culprit. She had forced Fredward Benson to switch with his monozygotic twin brother. Well, she was not necessarily aware of the blood relationship of the two people. And it was obvious that she had got very pernicious motivations for doing so. Alas, I did not know what she gained with it. But her mind was poisoned — or so I interpreted one of her thoughts — by the anticipation of enjoying Bolivian bacon.[7:7] This made sense, as Bolivia was another country in South America.

The experiment had obviously been a plain success, but where was I supposed to go from there?

* * *

**7.10 The Sky Is The Limit**

This year, Seattle, in particular Priorwood Perep, had been chosen as the host of the nationals of the Academic Bowl.

Nevel's team was one of the contestants, and the expectations were very high. Never had Priorwood been any closer to this level.

I had been asked to try to help them a bit with scientific questions, but, honestly, there was not mnore than a placebo effect to be won from it. Shiould I explain to them once more stuff like "why is the sky blue?"

For it was not clear what I was supposed to teach the kids, barring the possibility of explaining the answers of the most tricky questions form the last years. But those would hardly be asked again, as that would have been really boring.

The students to represent Priorwood in this contest had just been selected: Nevel Papperman, Megan Parker, Carly Shay, and Leanne Carter. And with such a squad, only the sky was supposed to be the limit.

Of course the students from other teams would have to travel a long way. They would come from New York and from Los Angeles. And they nneeded especially accommodated somehow in Seattle, but where?

Right, there was that supercool downtown inn, run by no other than Drake Parker and Josh Nichols. And the administration of Pacific Coast Academy had booked a few rooms for their team. They were probably supposed to be our toughest opponents.

Stacey Dillsen had suggested this deal, as she was a former Pacific Coast Academy student.

Another opponent was some district school from Manhattan. Of course there were many of them, but that one was special, because Oscar and Amanda knew a few of their students, especially True Jackson, Lauren Peckinpaw,[7:8] and Ryan Laserbeam, kids hanging out at Mad Style. More precisely, True was a Vice President there, the youngest in the history of fashion labels.

It was in any case going to be a very interesting finale.

At the same time, Nevel and Megan were working a sort of hymn for the team's last reunion befor ethe event.

Nevel chanted a passage from Luigi Denza's _Funiculì Funiculà_:

* * *

Tirato co la fune  
Diritto 'n fatto,  
'n cielo se va.

* * *

This meant something like "drawn by the rope you go straight to the sky." That sounded like a hell of confidence.

* * *

**7.11 Dustin And Carly**

The grand finale had been scheduled for Valentine's day, and there we were.

The quiz was conducted by famous Burt Burlington,[7:9] well known from quiz show of country-wide popularity.

The team of Pacific Coast Academy consisted of Dustin Brooks, aforementioned little brother of Zoey Brooks. He was supported by his mates Henry, Max, and Jack.[7:10]

The team of Amanda's school was composed of only two canditates, videlicet Lauren Peckinpaw and her boyfriend Mikkey Jay. But at least she had got a few cheerleaders at her disposition, one of them being aforementioned creep Ryan Laserbeam who kept on performing artistic backflips.

Everything started with the usual tossup questions.

In the beginning, the Pacific Coast Academy team appeared to be very strong, although only Dustin appeared ever able to answer. His pals were just there in order to fill the gaps. But with the increasing length of the contestm, he turned weaker, and it was veruy obvious why. Whenever he heard Carly talke, or looked into her direction, he started blushing and losing his heartbeat for a few moments.

According to Quinn, Carly's web show had been Dustin's absolute favourite thing to watch, and he had suffered a lot by its removal. He must have been totally overwhelmed by Carly's vicinity.

I sighed deeply. Feeling guilty for having ruined his life in some sense by removing Carly from her fake friends, I decided to do something about the mess.

After all, it was Valentine's day, and maybe there was a way to get him to fess up to the crush of his life before having to be silent and unhappy forever.

Finally, it was a close call for all three teams. Due to a few bonus calls, Priorwood had just made the top, but not by a land slide, and the next turns would potentially be able to turn the odds.

Of course , intervening was not without a risk, Nevel and his time would have held it against me to have helped a member of a hostile team. Likewise, the Pacific Coast Academy people would have possible accused me of rubbing salt into the bleeding wounds of one of theirs.

But I dared to do the step, talking to Dustin about his probem. And I suggested him to fess up to Carly by singing something.

Zoey's little brother feared to sing crappily.

"With Nevel's and Megan's instrumental backup, singing comes easy, and you will feel like guided by angels' hands.

Dustin was still a bit dizzy, but he tried to give it a try.

Of course I had to ask Megan and Nevel to do something, which they granted gladly, inspite of Dustin being in a hostile team.

But then it was time to return to the contest.

A few questions later, Burlington fished a bonus question for Carly Shay. "OK, this one will be asked by captain Brooks of the Pacific Coast Academy team, and it's a musical question …"

Megan and Nevel started blowing their wood wind instruments, playing the tune of aforementioned _Fuuniculì, Funiculà_.

Dustin fell on his knees in front of Carly, looked at her with puppy eyes, and started singing along.

* * *

Aierrisera, oi Carlotta, me ne sagliette  
Tu sai addó| Tu sai addó| Addò 'stu core 'ngrato cchiù dispetto  
Famme nun pò  
Addò lo fuoco coce  
Ma se fuie  
Te lassa stà  
Te lassa stà  
E nun te corre appriesso  
Nun te struie  
Sulo a guardà[7:11]

* * *

With or without understanding the lyrics, Carly was consternated, and she sighed piteously. She had come to know Dustin at last night's common dinner of all the teams.

Nevel and Megan increased the volume and the power of the rhythm, until the last stanza by Dustin.

* * *

La capa vota, vota  
attuorno, attuorno  
attuorno a te.  
Sto core canta sempe  
nu taluorno  
Sposamme, Carly![7:12]

* * *

Carly was now totally dizzy. And then she broke into tears of passion while wrapping her arms around Dustin Brooks and squeezed him firmly. "Aw Dustin!"

By the way, Priorwood had already won by some minor difference, but it did not matter in any way, now that they had finally found together due to the wonderful instrumantal backing of Nevel and Megan.

Was there a way to achieve the same thing for Oscar and Amanda as well?

* * *

**7.12 Spring Wakeup**

Winter had come to an end, and spring time was the best season of the year for letting new feelingws blossom.

Dustin Brooks also proved as the key for approaching the nutty problem of Amanda and Brock, involving Oscar. Indeed, he told us a lot about Zoey's adventures with Logan.

The creep had started denigrating girls and even pusahing Zoey into the dirt at an early basketball match.[7:13] He had than repeatedly hit on Zoey, even abusing a stage play at Pacific Coast Academy in order to sneak a real kiss from the blond Mary Sue.[7:14]

Dustin also remarked how he had been treated like dirt by the coxcomb, which had finslly resulted Zoey Brooks, who had ever since forgiven everything, to break her contact with the jerk.

The story of Zoey Brooks finally caused Amanda Cantwell to awaken, realising how bad her relationship with a jock and coxcomb had always been and would walways be.

Another musical effort of Megan and Nevel, with the joined force of aforementioned Mikey Jay, and extremely gifted triangle player, finally made Amanda Cantwell see that fellow space planter Oscar was the most suited man for her life. Once more, the power of the music had worked like a spring stick in order to catapult Amanda Cantwell to new levels.

* * *

**7.13 The End Of A Villain**

Royce Bingham had found out even more, enough to give the impression of a gross scandal.

It would have been impossible to present the ugly mess to the greater public without the help of one of the most feisty future journalists, a certain Nolan Byrd[7:15] from Cedar Valley in central California. This young inquisitive mind was also known as "Shredderman".

Doctor Wheeler and his assistant Marissa Benson had been responsible for the birth of the heir of aforementioned royal couple. Indeed, the young queen had given birth to a triplet, but Wheeler and Benson abducted two of three boys, which got never noticed because the king and queen had not known of a triple birth. Wheeler and Benson had been up to abusing the boys in order to be able to damage their real parents and their country, which was indeed struck in a food scandal. They exported Bolivian bacon, made from pigs fed with Peruvian puff peppers. This sort of ham was of course illegal throughout the United States.

Doctor Wheeler and Marissa Benson had also got an important rôle in this illegal business, but the main string puller had always been the dather of Samantha Puckett, and her grandfather before him. Brock Champion was also an important henchman. Besides smuggling Peruvian puff peppers, which had probably got aunt Penelope terribly sick, he was also involved in some bet manipulation fraud.

Amanda Cantwell was thus lucky that she had escaped from this coxcomb right in time.

After the revelation of the horrible scandal, Officer Vega from Hollywood was able to arrest the major culprits, videlicet: Doctor Wheeler and Marissa Benson.

Samantha Puckett and Fredward Benson were offered witness protection, and they had to flee to some unbeknownst place.

Carly got her own bodyguard, Chuck Javers,[7:16] an unstoppable wrestling tank. Due to the distance, Carly was now finally safe from the obnoxious impact of Samantha Puckett and her henchman Fredward Benson.

Prince Gabriel eloped with Melanie Puckett to some other unbeknownst world.

* * *

**7.14 Graduation From Seattech**

Finally, it was the right moment for me to graduate from Seattech.

Cal was of course most happy about me having made it, with the best results in the history of this school.

Ten years ago, I had definitely not expected to graduate from a place like this one. But things had gone astray, although I did not care any longer.

Nevel and Megan had been hired in order to make some music, and even Mikey Jay had arrived as a supporter from New York City, rigged and ready to make the lovely vibrations of his triangle go trembling through the ground.

Even a choir singer from California had been hired, someone just known as Coconut Head. He was known to be the best in his category.

* * *

Gaudeamus igitur.  
Iuvenes dum sumus.  
Post iucundam iuventutem.  
Post molestam senectutem.  
Nos habebit humus. [7:17]

* * *

I walked ahead in order to obtain my diploma, but I was too tired to give the usual valedictorian speech.

Fortunately, Nevel and his henchmen helped us along by making more music, covering my nonsensical talk.

* * *

Vivat academia  
Vivant Professores  
Vivat membrum quodlibet  
Vivat membræ quælibet  
Semper sint in flore.[7:18]

* * *

I received my diploma and held it aloft after one last handshake.

Yet another important chapter in my life had apparently come to an end.

Cal gave me something, too, a little box with a bow on it …

* * *

**7.15 Faithful And True**

It was a grey and windy day in Seattle when the bells were up to ringing for me and for my beloved Calvin Coozeman.

Aunt Penelope was ready to guide me down the aisle. My parents were not willing to show up. Well, I could easily do without those creeps.

Nevel and Megan were going to perform the _Bridal Chorus_ from Wagner's great opera _Lohengrien_.

Father MacCurdy, whom I still remembered from my time as a high school senior at Priorwood Prep, was going to conduct our wedding.

The sound of the sweet music made by my favourite cousin and his girlfriend filled the air.

* * *

Faithful and true  
We lead ye forth  
Where love triumphant  
Shall crown ye with joy.

Star of renown  
Flow'r of the earth  
Blessed be ye both  
Far from all life's annoy

Champion victorious  
Go thou before  
Maid bright and glorious  
Go thou before

Earth's noisy revel  
Ye have forsaken  
Tender delight  
For you now awaken

* * *

And now it was time for MacCurdy to ask the questions of our lives. "Do you, Melinda Crenshaw want to takke this valiant , Calvin Coozeman, …"

"I will!" I almost exploded inside out into saying these two words after having sweated while listening to the words of the priest.

Do you, Calvin Coozeman, want to take to take this virtuous maid, Melinda Crenshaw, …

My heart hammered like a factory of steam driven sledge hammers.

Cal stated proudly: "I will!"

I felt hot and cold at the very same time.

Quinn Pensky, my beloved maid of honour, was of course the first to congratulate me, jumping to my shoulders and almost throwing me to the ground.

Cal was supported faithfully by his best man, Shane.

Now I was allowed to kiss Cal. I closed my eyes to get done with it. Still, it felt awkward in front of all those onlookers.

Was that really me, Melinda Crenshaw, oops … Melinda Coozeman?

There was not much time left for our honeymoon, as the next research projects were already in front of our eyes.

* * *

**7.16 Conclusions**

Seattle was now history. Cal and I were accepted to an international research centre somewhere in South America … no, nothing to do with Peruvian puff peppers and Bolivian bacon.

This meant that Nevel was now left behind in the Emerald City, and I was certainly going to miss him awfully much.

I was going to visit Seattle soon again, though, for the weddings of Drake and Lucy, and that of Josh and Stacy, two faery tale like events, as it seemed.

Spencer and his concubine Cream Fielder were about to get married as well, the same was valid for Shane and Quinn, but I would not get the occasion to show up there.

Megan and nevel were still too young for such a step. But they were working towards getting a scholarship for the Scala, one of the most renowned classic theatres of Europe. It was located in the city of Milan.

Carly and Dustin were still living thousand miles apart. but thsi was not an obstacle to their steadily growing true love.

Leanne Carter and Zachariah Carter Schwartz were facing the hatred of their families, but this was not a reason to stop that supercute couple.

Oscar and Amanda were also going to marry in New York City, far outside my reach.

Nevertheless, I was now working towards my first Nobel Prize, no matter with which of my many research projects.

The telepathic powers bestowed by Malika upon me and Nevel had now expired, though. Or maybe they were still around to be used when really needed? Hey? What was that? Who has just thought about this? Oops!

**_The End_**

* * *

** 1:1**:

* * *

Mindy's parents are featured in _Drake & Josh_: _Girl Power_, while their business is mentioned in _Drake & Josh_: _Really Big Shrimp_.

**1:2**:

* * *

This identified Mindy Crenshaw with the same actress's guest rôle as Stasie in _Zoey 101_: _Backpack_.

**1:3**:

* * *

This identifies Drake Parker with the same actor's autonymous guest appearance in _Zoey 101_: _Spring Fling_.

**1:4**:

* * *

The first name of Mrs. Papperman is from the same actress's cameo in a thord-party owned movie.

**1:5**:

* * *

Otis is from _Zoey 101_: _Quinn__'__s Alpaca_.

**2:1**:

* * *

Arthur Gradstein is mentioned in _The iCarly Show_: _iLike Jake_ and in _Victorious_: _WiiFi In The Sky_.

**2:2**:

* * *

This occurs in _Drake & Josh_: _Honour Council_.

**2:3**:

* * *

Father MacCurdy is mentioned in _The iCarly Show_: _iWant A Record_.

**2:4**:

* * *

Phil Brownley is a cameo from _The iCarly Show_: _iMight Switch Schools_.

**2:5**:

* * *

Go away, thought, on golden wings, rest upon the hills and braes, where the scent of the homelands is so tender and sweet. Greet the banks of the Jordan and the stomped towers of Zion.

**2:6**:

* * *

Doctor Lange is a cameo character from _Zoey 101_: _Quinn__'__s Alpaca_.

**2:7**:

* * *

This refers to _Zoey 101_: _Robot Wars_.

**2:8**:

* * *

This refers to _Drake & Josh_: _Drake and Josh go Hollywood_.

**2:9**:

* * *

This show is featured in _Zoey 101_: _Spring Break__-__Up_.

**3:1**:

* * *

Miss Fielder is a guest character from _The iCarly Show_: _iMust Have Locker 239_ with a surname borrowed from same actress's rôle in some third party owned movie.

**3:2**:

* * *

Josh is a designer in _Drake & Josh_: _First Crush_.

**3:3**:

* * *

Ashley is a guest character from _The iCarly Show_: _iHire An Idiot_ with a family name borrowed from the same actress's rôle in some third party owned show.

**3:4**:

* * *

This machine is the same as that the one featured in _Zoey 101_: _Paige At PCA_.

In that episode, Paige Howard, portrayed by the same actress as Megan Parker, is presented as the inventor.

I suppose that Paige is Megan in disguise and acts as a remote instructed agent of Mindy.

But in this story, Mindy's early departure from California implies that the canon events of _Zoey 101_: _Backpack_ have never occurred, and thus Mindy is not a persona non grata at Pacific Coast Academy, and thus needs no agent. In addition, this move to Seattle also prevents Megan and Mindy from becoming familiar.

**3:5**:

* * *

Quinn blows a trombone in _Zoey 101_: _Lola likes Chase_, et alibi.

**3:6**:

* * *

Used car dealer Otto is mentioned in _The iCarly Show_: _iGive Aay A Car_.

**3:7**:

* * *

Glazer is a cameo in _Drake & Josh_: _The Bet_ et alibi.

**3:8**:

* * *

Doctor Trestin is from _The iCarly Show_: _iFight Shelby Marx_.

**3:9**:

* * *

This connection is from _Drake & Josh_: _Peruvian Puff Pepper_.

**3:10**:

* * *

This grandmother appears in _The iCarly Show_: _iRue The Day_.

**3:11**:

* * *

Grizzly glue is from _Victorious_: _Tori The Zombie_.

**3:12**:

* * *

This alludes to third party owned sonf _New York, New York_ by Frank Sinatra.

**3:13**:

* * *

Hyperbolic photon cannons are featured in _Drake & Josh_: _Mindy loves Josh._

**3:14**:

* * *

Shane is a guest character from _The iCarly Show_: _iSaw Him First_, with a surname borrowed from the same actor's rôle in _Bigtime Rush_.

**3:15**:

* * *

Eli Pataki is a multiple cameo of _Unfabulous_: _Little Sister_ et alibi.

**3:16**:

* * *

This identifies Addie Singer from _Unfabulous_ with the same actress's cameo in _Drake & Josh_: _Honor Council_.

**3:17**:

* * *

Jamerson is a guest character from _True Jackson VP_: _True__'__s New Assistant_.

**3:18**:

* * *

Bradford is a guest character from _Supah Ninjas_: _Mr Bradford_ with a first name borrowed from the same actor's guest rôle in one episode of third party owned _Bones_.

**3:19**:

* * *

She is here identified with the same actress's anonymous guest rôle in _The iCarly Show_: _iLook Alike_.

**3:20**:

* * *

Harry Joiner is from _The iCarly Show_: _iHeart Art_.

**3:21**:

* * *

Hail Sweeny, protrector of the laboratory, hail the dean, ruler over the campus, hail Mindy! Intertwine laurel and lotus, making a winners' crown. Let a gentle shower of flowers conceil the weapons.

**3:22**:

* * *

Come on, victorious Mindy, come and rejoice with us. Let's pour laurel and flowers while Mindy is passing by!

**4:1**:

* * *

Takato is a guest character in _Zoey 101_: _Chasing Zoey_.

**4:2**:

* * *

The rat is featured in _Zoey 101_: _Zoey__'__s Tutor_.

**4:3**:

* * *

The spider has got a cameo in _Zoey 101_: _Quarantine_.

**4:4**:

* * *

The snake shows up in _Zoey 101_: _Girls will be boys._

**4:5**:

* * *

The existence of the ostrich is vaguely insinuated by a remark made in _Zoey 101_: _Quinn__'__s Alpaca_. The ostrich is here identified with one featured in _The iCarly Show_: _iMeet Fred_.

**4:6**:

* * *

This is cameo Tasha from _The iCarly Show_: _iNevel_, with a surname borrowed from the same actress's rôle in third party owned _JONAS_.

She is identified with the same actress's anonymous cameo in some episode in season two _Unfabulous_.

This Tasha is by absolutely no means to be confused with another Tasha featured in _The iCarly Show_: _iEnrage Gibby_.

**4:7**:

* * *

Bert Beringer is a cameo in _Zoey 101_: _Paige At PCA_.

**4:8**:

* * *

Trina Vega from _Victorious_ is here identified with the same actress's guest rôle as Rebecca in _Zoey 101_: _Surprise_ et alibi.

**4:9**:

* * *

This Bradford is mentioned in _Zoey 101_: _Prank Week_.

**4:10**:

* * *

Cynthia Bromwell appears in _Zoey 101_: _Zoey__'__s Tutor_.

**4:11**:

* * *

Toplin is the anonymous cameo of the same actor in _Drake & Josh_: _Battle Of Panthatar_, as per the credits on _IMDB_.

The situation insinuates that he is meant as the younger brother of guest character Thornton Wheeler.

**4:12**:

* * *

According to _Drake & Josh_: _First Crush_, Josh likes knitting socks.

**4:13**:

* * *

Marilyn Raymour is a guest character from _The iCarly Show_: _iWant A Record_.

**4:14**:

* * *

Valerie is a guest character from _The iCarly Show_: _iWoll Date Freddie_.

She is identified with an unportrayed Valerie mentioned in _Zoey 101_: _Drippin__'__ Episode_.

**4:15**:

* * *

All that is from _The iCarly Show_: _iAm Your Biggest Fan_.

**4:16**:

* * *

Wendy is a guest character from _Drake & Josh_: _Number One Fan_.

**4:17**:

* * *

This happens in _The iCarly Show_: _iDont Want To Fight_.

**4:18**:

* * *

Trisha Kirby is a guest character from _Zoey 101_: _Bad Girl_.

**4:19**:

* * *

Daka Shoes are featured in _Drake & Josh_: _Really Big Shrimp_ and in _The iCarly Show_: _iPromote Techfoots_.

**4:20**:

* * *

Morgan is a cameo from _The iCarly Show_: _iCarly Saves TV_.

The family name is chosen because Brad, mentioned below, is here idfentified with the same actor's rôle as Principal Eichman in _Victorious_: _iPilot_.

**4:21**:

* * *

Amber Tate is a guest character from _The iCarly Show_: _iCarly Saves TV_.

**4:22**:

* * *

This is from _The iCarly Show_: _iFence_.

**5:1**:

* * *

This refers to the events from 'ic: _iGo To Japan_.

**5:2**:

* * *

This line is inspired by third party owned song _Summer Nights_ from third party owned musical _Grease_.

**5:3**:

* * *

This is guest character Cal from _The iCarly Show_: _iGo Nuclear_. The surname is borrowed from same actor's rôle in some third party owned movie.

**5:4**:

* * *

Pete is a guest character from _The iCarly Show_: _iMake Sam Girlier_, with a surname borrowed from same actor's rôle in third party owned _Billy Engvall Show_.

**5:5**:

* * *

Tyler is a guest character from _The iCarly Show_: _I love sushi_, with a surname borrowed from same actor's rôle in third party owned _Billy Engvall Show_.

**5:6**:

* * *

Josh is addicted to video game consoles in _Drake & Josh_: _The Bet_.

**5:7**:

* * *

This hotel in Seattle is mentioned in _The iCarly Show_: _iWant To Stay With Spencer_. There was also a temporary Parker Nichols Inn in the appropriately named _Drake & Josh_ episode.

**5:8**:

* * *

This student teaching is featured in _Drake & Josh_: _Megan__'__s New Teacher_.

**5:9**:

* * *

This occurred in _Drake & Josh_: _Parker Nichols Inn_.

**5:10**:

* * *

Lars Balthasar is a guest character from _True Jackson VP_: _Saving Snackleberry_.

**5:11**:

* * *

This occurs in _The iCarly Show_: _iReunite With Missy_.

**5:12**:

* * *

Henning is from _The iCarly Show_: _iGo Nuclear_.

**5:13**:

* * *

The eye laser surgery on Sam's mother is mentioned in _The iCarly Show_: _iMust Have Locker 239_.

**5:14**:

* * *

This is seen in _Zoey 101_: _Trading Places_.

**5:15**:

* * *

Come On Inn and its usage for surgeries is featured in _The iCarly Show_: _iTake On Dingo_.

**5:16**:

* * *

Missy Robinson is from _The iCarly Show_: _iReunite With Missy_.

**6:1**:

* * *

This is guest character Malika from _The iCarly Show_: _iSpeeddate_ with a surname borrowed from the same actress's rôle in _TeenNick_ show _Gigantic_.

**6:2**:

* * *

Ashley Blake is a guest character from _Drake & Josh_: _Little Diva_.

**6:3**:

* * *

This is mentioned in _Zoey 101_: _Chasing Zoey_.

**6:4**:

* * *

Grizzly Glue is featured in _Drake & Josh_: _Tori The Zombie_.

**6:5**:

* * *

This alludes to third-party owned song _Way Up To The Cloud_ by Dean Martin.

**6:6**:

* * *

This occurred in _Drake & Josh_: _Paging Doctor Drake_.

**6:7**:

* * *

Geena is identified with Cadence Nash from _The Troop_.

**6:8**:

* * *

This is a third party owned song by Mariah Carey.

**6:9**:

* * *

Prince Gabriel is a guest character from _True Jackson VP_: _True Royalty_.

**6:10**:

* * *

This hotel is mentioned in several episodes of Schneider's works. The Seattle branch is mentioned in _The iCarly Show_: _iRock The Votes_.

**6:11**:

* * *

This is reveiled in _Zoey 101_: _Silver Hammers_.

**6:12**:

* * *

Sidney van Gurbin is a guest character in _The iCarly Show_: _iBelieve In Bigfoot_.

**6:13**:

* * *

This identified cameo character Ernie from _The iCarly Show_: _iWas A Pageant Girl_ with Lane from _Victorious_.

**6:14**:

* * *

Melanie Puckett is a guest character from _The iCarly Show_: _iTwins_, identified with Fawn Leibowitz from _Victorious_: _Crazy Ponny_.

**6:15**:

* * *

Doctor Wheeler is a guest character from _The iCarly Show_: _iThink They Kissed_.

**7:1**:

* * *

Royce Bingham is a guest character from _True Jackson VP_: _True Fear_.

**7:2**:

* * *

Thornton Wheeler is a guest character from _Drake & Josh_: _Battle Of Panthatar_.

**7:3**:

* * *

This Record Label is featured in _Victorious_: _Birthweek Song_.

**7:4**:

* * *

This show is mentioned in _True Jackson VP_: _True Matching_.

**7:5**:

* * *

This RPG is featured in _The iCarly Show_: _iStart A Fanwar_.

**7:6**:

* * *

Olivary Biallo is a guest character from _Zoey 101_: _School Dance_, identified with same actor's rôle as Jerome Crony in _Ned__'__s Declassified School Survival Guide_.

**7:7**:

* * *

According to _The iCarly Show_: _iSaved Your Life_, Sam likes Bolivian bacon.

**7:8**:

* * *

This is Lulu from _True Jackson VP_. The family name is borrowed from the same actress's rôle in _Bucket And Skinner_.

**7:9**:

* * *

Burt Burlington is a guest character from _True Jackson VP_: _True Parade_.

**7:10**:

* * *

Henry, Max, and Jack are cameos in _Zoey 101_: _Haunted House_.

**7:11**:

* * *

Last night, Carlotta, I ascended, you kno where? Where this ungrateful heart may no longer confuse me, where the fire boils, but it will leave you in peace if you run away in time, and just looking won't hurt you.

**7:12**:

* * *

My head is spinning around, around you. This heart sings over and over again: "Marry me, Carly!"

**7:13**:

* * *

This occurs in _Zoey 101_: _Pilot_.

**7:14**:

* * *

This occurs in _Zoey 101_: _The Play_.

**7:15**:

* * *

This is the main character of _Shredderman rules!_

**7:16**:

* * *

Chuck Javers is from _Zoey 101_: _Wrestling_.

**7:17**:

* * *

Let us rejoice while we are young. After playful youth and troubled old age, the soil will hold us.

**7:18**:

* * *

Hail our college, hail the teachers! Hail our undergraduates, hail our graduate, let them flourish forever! 


End file.
